First Black Friday for employees at new Amazon hub ORDERS PICKED, PACKED AND
ROLLED OUT ACROSS THE UK
WITH Black Friday under way today, staff inside a new Amazon fulfilment centre in Nottinghamshire are busy shipping thousands of orders to customers.
The new Sutton-in-ashfield hub, at Summit Park, has been open for just a matter of weeks but staff have already been gearing up for the busiest period of the year.
Black Friday orders have been coming in for weeks as the online giant continues its Black Friday Month offer, while orders are also arriving in time for Christmas.
Each day, tens of thousands of items are picked and distributed by operatives and robots, with the centre dispatching items across the country almost 24 hours a day.
Georgia Akuwudike, 30, site manager at the Sutton-in-ashfield hub, said: “We’ve been set up for about seven weeks trying to ramp up the site. It’s our first Black Friday and we’re all really excited. For a lot of us we’re either brand new to Amazon or new to a role like myself. It has been good so far, for a site that’s fairly new we’ve managed it well. We’ve not had any issues or concerns and we’re confident from what we’ve seen so far. It’s a lot of orders and it keeps increasing every day, but we’re here and we’re made for it.”
The site has people working ten-hour shifts, four days a week, with most hours covered throughout a 24-hour period.
The staff are supported by hi-tech robotics, which occupy the upper floors of the warehouse and supply stock to pickers and packers ready to be shipped to customers.
Workers stand at their stations and the robots bring shelves directly to them, identifying which items they need to pick and where they need to go.
The shelves are then moved on and items picked are processed through the warehouse, making their way via conveyor belts to packers who box parcels up. They are then moved through an automated labelling machine and send for dispatch.
Richard Short, 48, a fulfilment operative from Ashfield, said: “The robotic bases follow sensors on the floor, and it’s all linked into the system we have at the stations. It’s great and it works really well – it saves a lot of time and energy. It eliminates people having shelves to walk up and down each day to collect items. In theory, the shelves come to you and you can put the correct item away without moving.”
Shannon Willet, 22, from Hucknall, works throughout the centre.
“I’m currently sorting gift wraps for all the Christmas orders coming in from customers,” she said. “It’s a little bit different and it’s a bit more special doing this, it’s something extra I’ve been trained on, on top of normal packing. It’s busy, you can tell people are starting to order for the festive period.”