New Employee's Field Guide to DB03

Warehouse Structure

There are 4 areas of the warehouse made up of 2 clusters each. That makes 8 clusters total. Each cluster is made up of many aisles. Aisles are made up of 14 bags and 3 oversized package racks.

Journey of a Package Through the Warehouse

A package starts off in the tractor trailer. An Amazon Associate (AA) takes the package from the tractor trailer and places it on the conveyor belt. Another AA with a label maker scans the the package and sticks the label on the package. This sticker shows which bag that the package needs to be stowed in.

This sticker shows that the package must go in the bag 4D in aisle 5 of the C cluster.

The packages are placed on the conveyor belts pictured below and go up the big iron to divert.

From here an AA diverts the package to the correct cluster by placing it in the correct chute. The chutes that the package can go through are labeled HJ, AB, CD, and EG. The picture below shows the where a diverter stands and the chutes that the packages go down.

Once the package is put through one of those chutes, another conveyor belt takes it to its cluster. From there, it goes down another conveyor belt like the one pictured below. This is the CD cluster.

An AA stands at the beginning of this conveyor belt and splits the packages. This means that they move the package to the correct side of the conveyor belt. This shows the chute that the packages come down from and where the splitter works.

Pullers stand on each side of the conveyor belt and put the packages onto the correct shelves. Stowers take packages from the shelves and put them in the correct bags. The video below shows a stower moving packages from the shelf into the bags.

After all the packages are stowed in their bags we pick the bags and put them on a U-boat. Sometimes if the packages don’t fit in bags they are stored outside of a bag. The picture below shows two U-boats filled with bags and oversize packages.

The bags and packages wait on this cart until the Amazon delivery drivers pack everything into their vans.

Available Tasks

I explained these jobs in little detail in the previous section. Here is more information about each one.

Unload

AAs take packages out of tractor trailers, boxes, and carts and place them onto the conveyor belts.

Induct

AAs have a smartphone-like device connected to a scanner capable of printing sticky labels. Inducters scan the shipping label of the package on the conveyor belt and the scanner prints out a label for the inducter to stick on the package they scanned.

Divert

AAs send packages down the correct chutes based on their sticker. If a package has no sticker or there is no cluster label on the package then the AA sends the package down the CD chute.

Split

AAs move the package to the correct side of the conveyor belt. If there is no label on the package or if the package is in the wrong cluster, the splitter moves the package onto a side shelf.

Pull

AAs stand between the conveyor belt and the aisles. They take the packages off the conveyor belt and put them on the shelf of the correct aisle. When they aren’t moving packages from the conveyor belt to the shelves, they are reorganizing the shelves to make it easier for the stower to stow.

Stow

AAs have a device connected to a scanner. The AA takes a package from the shelf, scans the shipping label on it and puts the package in the correct bag according to the yellow sticker. Then the AA scans the label on the inside of the bag to show that the package has been put in the correct bag.

Pick

AAs have a device connected to a scanner. They find an empty U-boat and scan the label on it. Then the device tells the picker which bags and oversize packages to load onto the U-boat. After the AA collects all of the bags and oversize packages, the AA stages the U-boat in the correct location by scanning the tag on the floor.