Chicago Sun-Times (Sunday)

THE MARVEL OF AMAZON’S MECHANIZED MAZE OF MERCHANDIS­E

A look behind the scenes at MDW7, the internet retail giant’s mammoth robotic fulfillmen­t center in Monee

- NEIL STEINBERG nsteinberg@suntimes.com | @NeilSteinb­erg

Darnell Gilton is “picking,” a process which takes six or seven seconds.

“When the pod pulls up to me, I look at the screen,” explains Gilton. “The screen tells me what bin to pick the product from. I go to the bin, I grab the product, I bring it to the hand scanner here, I scan the product, the light tells me what tote to put the product in. Just like that.”

The pod is a yellow tower about 7 feet high, each of four sides presenting a grid of merchandis­e tucked securely into bins, driven by an orange robot tucked underneath. The screen shows an item — in this case, a Real Techniques Miracle Complexion Sponge + Case located in cubby 2H. Gilton grabs it, scans it, tosses it into a yellow bin beyond a flashing green button, hitting the button to show he’s finished the task. Then he does it again, with a different product. About 350 times an hour.

Gilton works at MDW7, the Amazon Robotics Fulfillmen­t Center in Monee, one of nine in Illinois, with two more on the way. In all, there are 50 similar facilities in the United States, with another 100 worldwide, part of a staggering network of warehouses, distributi­on hubs, conveyers, chutes, trucks, pickers, drivers, supervisor­s and, of course, an omnipresen­t internet presence, which working together last year sold $280 billion worth of products and delivered 3.5 billion packages worldwide.

The advent of COVID-19 has made Amazon, already the most dominant online retailer in the world, more important than ever, as fear of going out in public has encouraged people to try e-commerce. Even as the president slashes at the Postal Service, trying to cut into

Amazon’s business, it grows so fast the company, now worth $2 trillion, is hiring 5,500 new workers in Illinois, adding to the 23,000 already working in the state.

Between that, and Amazon Prime Day last week — Prime Days actually, Tuesday and Wednesday, when the world’s largest e-retailer offered all sorts of sales for its 112 million U.S. members, more than a third of the entire population of the country, who get free shipping for a monthly Prime fee of about $12 — a visit seemed in order.

MDW7 — “MDW” refers to the code for Midway; Amazon fulfillmen­t centers are named for the nearest airport — is enormous, nearly a million square feet, and from the parking lot, that size immediatel­y presents reportoria­l challenges.

“I don’t have a wide enough lens,” Sun-Times photograph­er Ashlee Rezin Garcia said as we walked up to the building, its inner entrance emblazoned, “work hard. have fun. make history.” Later a Sun-Times drone was dispatched to capture the place from the air.

Since Amazon is controvers­ial, from its effect upon small business to conditions for workers at places like MDW7 — past Prime Days have seen protests about their treatment — I want to say upfront that I talked to a half-dozen of the 5,000 employees there, working 10-hour, four-day-a-week shifts. This newspaper has a fine tradition of investigat­ive exposes, but this isn’t one of them. I spent an hour gee-whizzing through the place.

As trucks are on their way from an Amazon warehouse in Joliet, bearing, oh, cases of Quaker Chewy Granola bars and pallets of Evian water, Amazon’s computer already is assigning individual items to particular orders. The arriving merchandis­e is placed into pods; squat orange robots scoot under them and move them around in a smooth, silent ballet — that’s why this is a robotics fulfillmen­t center — that makes you wonder how many of those 5,000 workers will be on the job five years from now.

The mezzanine is an enormous floor of crisscross­ing conveyors — about 6 miles worth in this one building — with crates holding merchandis­e racing along at 10 feet per second. Noise fills the air, a constant roar, like a cascading waterfall.

“Photo eyes and different cameras track the trays,” says Mike Stone, director of workplace health and safety for customer the fulfillmen­t network, worldwide, his voice amplified through a small loudspeake­r.

Stone calls the process “an intricate dance.”

“Scanners know where every single one of these things is,” he says. “Everything is tracked through bar codes on each one of the different containers.”

Early in the pandemic, Amazon was criticized for not being candid about employee COVID infections and deaths. Last week Amazon announced that nearly 20,000 of its 1.3 million U.S. workers have tested positive for the disease. The company has spent $4 billion, Stone said, trying to keep its employees and customers safe, staggering shifts, for instance, so employees coming to work don’t bunch up at the entrance.

“Since March we have made a tremendous amount of changes to our buildings, layouts, processes, policies, to make sure we can operate safely during these times,” said Stone. “Lots of our buildings were designed for people working within 6 feet of each other, which was a no-no. We had to redesign work stations, building barriers.”

The employees I spoke with didn’t sugarcoat what they do.

“Tough but good,” said Aaron Young, 38, who lives on the South Side of Chicago and joined Amazon last April. “It’s a warehouse job, so it’s not easy work. You have to lift, and some of the items are heavy. But nothing unmanageab­le.”

Gilton, 23, has worked here since November.

“You work four days a week and then you have three days off,” says Gilton, who lives in Country Club Hills. “As long as you take the time to recuperate during your three days, you’ll be fine.”

On my way out, I run into Kelvin Madera, 21, of Crown Point, Indiana, arriving at his first day of work at Amazon, along with Julisa Martinez Madera, his 23-year-old sister. Why do they want to work here? “A chance to grow and learn new things,” says Martinez Madera. “There’s a lot of opportunit­y here.”

“A great opportunit­y,” says her brother. “The pay is good. Who wouldn’t want to work here?”

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 ?? ASHLEE REZIN GARCIA/SUN-TIMES ?? A worker on a catwalk at the Amazon MDW7 fulfillmen­t center in Monee. The massive facility is nearly a million square feet and contains about six miles of conveyors.
ASHLEE REZIN GARCIA/SUN-TIMES A worker on a catwalk at the Amazon MDW7 fulfillmen­t center in Monee. The massive facility is nearly a million square feet and contains about six miles of conveyors.
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 ?? BRIAN ERNST/SUN-TIMES ?? ABOVE: An aerial view of MDW7, the Amazon Robotics Fulfillmen­t Center in Monee.
BRIAN ERNST/SUN-TIMES ABOVE: An aerial view of MDW7, the Amazon Robotics Fulfillmen­t Center in Monee.
 ?? ASHLEE REZIN GARCIA/ SUN-TIMES ?? LEFT: A squat orange robot tucks itself under a 7-foot-tall yellow product pod and conveys it to the pickers at MDW7 in Monee. Amazon bought the company that makes the robots, Kiva Solutions, in 2012.
ASHLEE REZIN GARCIA/ SUN-TIMES LEFT: A squat orange robot tucks itself under a 7-foot-tall yellow product pod and conveys it to the pickers at MDW7 in Monee. Amazon bought the company that makes the robots, Kiva Solutions, in 2012.
 ?? ASHLEE REZIN GARCIA/SUN-TIMES ?? LEFT: Darnell Gilton removes a product from a pod after it was purchased and places the product in a tote. RIGHT: Products travel in trays on conveyors to different locations in the warehouse, depending on where in the world they’re being shipped.
ASHLEE REZIN GARCIA/SUN-TIMES LEFT: Darnell Gilton removes a product from a pod after it was purchased and places the product in a tote. RIGHT: Products travel in trays on conveyors to different locations in the warehouse, depending on where in the world they’re being shipped.
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