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San Bernardino Amazon fulfillment center tour thrills visitors [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Calif.](Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 22--SAN BERNARDINO -- The wait was over Tuesday for a group of mostly Amazon customers as they made their way into the company's 1.2-million-square-foot distribution center here. About 15 individuals toured the center in San Bernardino on Tuesday after having applied months ago, because of long waiting list. Amazon opened the San Bernardino facility to public tours in spring, and those tours are geared toward demonstrating "software improvements that send products to a customer after the customer clicks 'buy,'" according to a letter from Jeff Bezos, sent earlier this year to the company's shareholders. Once inside, visitors were led through the warehouse filled with thousands of employees, conveyer belts and products waiting to be boxed and shipped. "The other day I ordered a connection cable from my camera to my computer," said Manuel Sanchez of Walnut. Sanchez, who is an Amazon Prime member, came to the event with his wife Maria Elena Sanchez. "I ordered it at night, and it came the next day. I just want to see how they can do it so fast; how they can get it from your order to you so fast. And you can buy anything." During the first part of the tour, Amazon community specialist Zeshan Kasmi took guests through product shelf space, where employees place and pick up sale items ready for distribution. Employees called pickers tag and locate items using barcode scanners. Whizzing overhead were bright yellow plastic bins carrying sold products ready to be boxed on the second floor for delivery. Upstairs, guests saw how items are quickly packed, before those items are then whisked away on a conveyor belt at 25 miles per hour. to be then mechanically pushed down chutes toward trucks from the major delivery services. Maria Elena Sanchez said she was awed by what she saw. "I thought it was terrific," Sanchez said. "It's very, very informative. I'm so impressed with how they run everything. It's just so organized, and it's so employee-oriented. It's massive. I love the packers, they're so efficient, and everything is well thought out, in terms of the tape, to the size of the box. It's very well done. I'm amazed." The facility, which runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, employs about 3,000 people. In the next few months as the holiday season approaches, Amazon will double the number of employees on site by hiring seasonal workers to meet holiday shopping demand. Tina Goodwin of Chino attended the tour with her husband Mike. "I loved it," Goodwin said. "I had gotten a package wrong once, and I can understand why, when I called customer service, they said they could not possibly believe I had gotten the wrong book inside. It took three times to get the correct one. This was three years ago, but I can understand that it was such a freak thing because they seem to be so perfect about everything they do here." The Goodwins say they've been shopping on Amazon.com. since the early 2000s and purchase something from the online retailer about once every two weeks. "On the one hand, it's a change how the technology is changing your relationship with a store, but we've tried to support local stores and even, at times, we try to buy things, and a lot of times they don't have the stock, so when you need something, you go where they can get the inventory," Mike Goodwin said. The San Bernardino Amazon fulfillment center, which handles the shipment of smaller items, opened in fall 2013. A 500,000-square-foot Amazon logistics facility, which will handle larger items, such as television sets, is set to begin operation in Redlands next month. That facility is expected to employ about 500. ___ (c)2014 the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, Calif.) Visit the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, Calif.) at www.dailybulletin.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |