Amazon opens doors to new robotics fulfillment center in Romulus

The requested item appears on a computer screen in front of a picker, and the screen indicates from which cubby the worker is pulling the product. A recently added component also lights up that cubby.

“You have the visual and the light to help with the efficiency of the process,” Westlund said. “You almost don’t have to think about it.”

The picker puts the item into a yellow tote box, which starts its journey along the 10 miles of conveyor belts in the facility. All of the steel in this building could create two Eiffel Towers.

All employees go through a four-week safety and training process. Wages start at $15 per hour and include full benefits.

“Our associates bring it all together for our customers,” Westlund said. “They are the heartbeat of what we do.”

If the order contains one small item, its tote heads to an associate like Daisy Neff, who quickly scans and slides the product into a large golden envelope and slaps on a printed shipping label.

“I have the record” of putting together the small packages, Neff said with a smile. “520 in an hour.”

Items that don’t fit in an envelope or are being shipped with another good are transferred into brown trays that are sorted by the order, and workers place the items together in a gray cubby. Employees on the other side package the products together.

The “SLAM” station is next, where packages are weighed to ensure they have the proper contents. A machine then stamps the box with a shipping label.

All items, now packaged and labeled, travel along the conveyer belt to be tracked and sent down chutes to the correct truck for shipment to an Amazon delivery center that will take the package directly to a customer’s house, to an Amazon sorting center that prepares the packages for postal delivery or to the United Parcel Service or FedEx Corp.

The state of Michigan provided a $5 million grant to the e-commerce giant for the fulfillment center.