[caption caption="Gudang Amazon di Rugeley, Inggris (dok: Teguh Widodo)"][/caption]
Tour ke Gudang Amazon atau Amazon Fulfillement Centre Tour ini mungkin tidak begitu mainstream ya untuk para pelancong, tapi cukup layak untuk dicoba. Tour ini bukan cuma ada di Inggris atau UK saja, tetapi juga ada di lima negara lainnya lho: Jerman, Perancis, Italia, Polandia, dan USA. Jadi bisa dicoba di sana...
Istri dan ketiga anak saya bersama beberapa keluarga yang lain pada tanggal 26 Mei 2015 yang lalu melakukan tour ke gudang Amazon yang ada di Rugeley, UK.Â
Tour yang gratis ini perlu booking terlebih dahulu karena cukup panjang antriannya. Contoh saja, pada bulan Mei lalu tour ke gudang yang di Rugeley ini sudah penuh s.d. April 2016!!
Saya kebetulan nggak bisa ikut tur hari itu, jadi tidak begitu tahu bagaimana ceritanya di sana. Peserta tour-pun tidak dizinkan untuk mengambil foto di dalam gudang, jadi saya minta anak sulung saya yang sebentar lagi berumur 14 tahun untuk ambil foto dari luar dan bikin reviunya. Oh ya, lokasi Amazon UK yang dikunjungi ada di kota Rugeley yg jaraknya kurang dari 1 jam berkereta dari Birmingham, kemudian dilanjut jalan kaki 30 menit menuju gudang, capek ya hehehe...
Monggo dinikmati cerita si sulung berikut ini, sebelumnya mohon maaf karena dia menulis dalam bahasa Inggris:
Hey. It has been a long time that I have written anything that is not schoolwork. This article is about my trip to Amazon Fulfilment Centre in Rugeley with family and friends.
We went there to see how Amazon sends us things that we have bought through their online shopping website. The fulfilment centre building that we went to was named BHX1, as all Amazon fulfilment centres are named after the nearest airport, and in our case it is the Birmingham International Airport.
Let’s start with the tour. The guide was called Holly, and there are other staffs too with us, called David, Rob, another Rob, and two ladies whose name I have forgotten. Holly told us that the building is 70000 square feet, which is the size of 10 football pitches.
The first thing we did was watch a clip about Amazon; about how the founder started amazon in his garage where he only sold books in 1994, and about how there are now about 100 centres around the world, and other things.
Then we were led to a certain Pallet area on the first floor of the building (I think). This is where the larger and the more popular items are; things like nappies (they’re popular apparently) and also toys (I saw Lego), which are very popular during Christmas time.
Holly then led us upstairs and I think it was called the Pick area. When the trucks come in with new items, they are checked 6 times to ensure that they are the correct ones. The smaller items are stowed in the Pick area on little shelves.
After people pick things they want to buy online and the message is sent to the fulfilment centre, a scanner would scan for the items the customers have picked and it would the staff members (they call them associates) where they are located.
Oh, and one other thing. The smaller items are place in random orders (everywhere where there is space), so for example there are no toys department, or books department. Then, the scanner would show the location of the wanted items nearest to the associates looking for the item; it saves time and energy.
When the items have been picked, they are put into boxes called totes. The black ones are used when a customer has bought more than one items and wants them to be packaged as one. The red is for damaged items, and the amethyst is for items in the wrong place. I don’t quite understand the last two. Items can’t be in a wrong place because they are deliberately put in random places. If they are damaged why did the associate pick it in the wrong place. I might have misunderstood the guide.
Let’s move on. The totes are placed on a conveyor belt where they are sent to the Rebin area. This is where items get packaged. They would be scanned first, to tell the packaging machine the size of them, so there is less cardboard wastage. And it would be sealed with the exact amount of tape. Then they would be given a single barcode that tells the personal information of the customer and the items bought.
Again, the packaged items are put onto a conveyor belt. There is another scanner to scan the barcode on each package, and the machine after the scanner would label it with the address and customer detail, as well as the postage option (like, Next-Day Delivery). Damaged items would be ‘kicked out’. And this is my theory about the red totes; the damaged items would be put into these red totes. But I still don’t get the amethyst ones.
The conveyor would take the packages into yet another scanner, which scans the postage option of each package, and the belt would ‘kick’ the packages onto the correct boxes, according to postage option. When there are items not yet put to these boxes in the first-round scan, they would be scanned yet again. These boxes then would be sent to the shipping docks, and we weren’t told what happens after this (or that I didn’t hear).
I heard Holly mentioned that this process is called SLAM: Scan; Label; Application; Manifest. She also said that Amazon is always improving to be more effective.
Overall, in my opinion the tour was okay, and as always there are things to be improved. I think when they explain to us the processes of picking, and scanning, and sorting, and other things, they should explain in a little more detail, because there are a few things that I didn’t quite understand. Also, in our case Holly started explaining things while some people (including me) are still walking to the spot where she told us to go. But it was a little bit interesting; not my thing though.
There are some facts that I will include here:
• Last year Amazon had 1250 kaizens (a Japanese word for ‘change for good’, so basically ‘improvements’)
• The Rugeley fulfilment (or it could be Amazon on the whole, as the information wasn’t very clear) had its busiest day on Black Friday 2014, when they sold 237 million items.
• The biggest Amazon fulfilment centre in the UK is in Swansea, Wales.
A fact about me (The author, ASW):
• I wrote this article while watching S2E1 of Sherlock (A Scandal in Belgravia) on BBC iPlayer. It finished while I was writing the packaging/labelling part. I have watched it before, but as it’s on again I watch it for the second time. I can’t wait for the fourth series.
Further info about the Tour around the world:
http://www.amazon.com/b?node=8947548011
Semoga bermanfaat :)
