Krista Martino grabs a box as it slides down toward her from an overhead metal chute. She scans it and places it on a small blue four-wheeled robot, which wheels its way to a sorting area, where it will be packed on an Amazon delivery van.

The small robot, which looks like a Lazy Susan the Jetson family would use, then merges onto a sort of e-commerce highway, jockeying alongside other self-driving robots that each know exactly where they need to take their package.

It’s part of Amazon’s growing use of robotics alongside employees, something that will be used more as Amazon plans to open 10 new facilities in metro Phoenix by the end of the year. The Goodyear facility with robotics, which opened last year off Litchfield Road between Van Buren Street and Yuma Road, receives packed orders from fulfillment and sorting centers and sends them on the road to customers’ homes.

“This is the last step before it reaches a customer’s door,” said Clinton Evans, director of workplace health and safety.

From your smartphone to the delivery van

Your Amazon package goes on a journey by the time you’ve received a confirmation email.

It works like this: When a customer places an order on their Amazon app or computer, a fulfillment center employee gets a notification on a handheld scanner, telling them where in the rows of merchandise they can find the items. Once they have the order together, it’s sent to a sorting facility to be packed.

After it’s in the signature Amazon box, it’s sent to a delivery station, like the one in Goodyear.

Some employees in Goodyear start working around midnight on the building’s second story to prep packages for the early morning delivery drivers.

They set each package on a small blue robot with four wheels. The robot uses AI to drive itself around the second story on a path to the correct funnel in the ground, where it dumps the order.

Each of these funnels empties downstairs onto a series of shelves that each correspond to a specific delivery driver’s route.

If one of the robotic helpers messes up and drops a package, an employee must walk out on the robotics floor and pick it up. These employees wear special “tech vests,” which send a signal to other wheeled robots to steer clear of them, Evans said. 

Later in the morning, delivery drivers line their vans up outside the facility and load the items from these chutes onto a van for delivery.

From Goodyear, these boxes will end up on a West Valley doorstep

Darius Marian pulls his van up to the front of the line at 8:55 a.m.

Marian, 25, is one of several dozen delivery drivers outside the Goodyear facility on Thursday morning. The drivers line up in three rows next to portable shelves full of packed orders.

Many of these drivers are independent contractors who can make their own hours, Amazon spokesperson Lisa Guinn said.

Once they’re parked, the drivers use an app to scan the shelves and pack the orders on their vans by ZIP code.

The facility does four “waves” of these shipments per day, Evans said. By using the “all-in, all-out approach” and bringing drivers in all at once, accidents and scheduling conflicts are less likely, he said. 

“Everything we build is around associates’ safety,” he said.

Within a half-hour, Marian and the other drivers will be on the road, fanning out across the West Valley to make deliveries.

Running an Amazon facility in the age of COVID-19

Nearly everything at the Goodyear facility has been changed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company earlier this month said nearly 20,000 employees across the U.S. tested positive for COVID-19. It compared that to its 1.37 million employees between Amazon and Whole Foods and said the infection rate was significantly below the national average.

Amazon at the time said it would’ve had nearly 34,000 cases if the company’s infection rate was the same as the national average.

When employees show up to work in Goodyear, they’re greeted by another employee surrounded by plexiglass who directs them to stand in front of a camera and TV monitor.

The employees see themselves on the screen in real time, with their temperature floating above their head, as the camera completes a thermal scan. Employees with fevers or symptoms of illness are directed to stay home.

Other asymptomatic employees are able to regularly get free COVID-19 tests at the delivery station, Evans said.

From there, employees make their way through the break room, with tables and chairs spread several feet apart for social distancing, before they get to their work stations.

They have the option to clock in on a smartphone app, rather than a traditional time clock, to avoid being crowded around each other and repeatedly touching the same surface.  

Giant monitors in the breakroom use cameras to show everyone a live feed of what’s happening in the break room. Each person the camera detects has a green circle around their feet to show how far away they should stay from other people. If they move closer, the circles turn yellow and then red to let them know they aren’t following social distancing guidelines.

Martino, the employee who preps packages onto her robotic assistants, said she feels safe at work in spite of the pandemic.  

“You go in an area and they’re right there behind you cleaning up,” Martino said.

Arizona will gain thousands of jobs in Amazon hiring blitz

Goodyear has become something of an Amazon hub with plans to have five Amazon sites by the end of next year.

Its use of robotics will expand in the Valley, too. A Goodyear fulfillment center that uses robotics similar to the ones at the delivery station is planned to open this year near Bullard Avenue and Yuma Road with more than 1,000 employees.

The company in August announced plans to hire 3,000 full- and part-time employees in the Valley and open 10 new facilities by the end of this year, with another two facilities planned to open in 2021. The planned facilities are: 

• Avondale: 103rd Avenue and Roosevelt Street. “Merch by Amazon” print on demand service that prints and sells designs uploaded on the internet.
• Chandler: Arizona Avenue and Warner Road. Delivery station.
• Chandler: McQueen and Queen Creek roads. Delivery station.
• Goodyear: Bullard Avenue and Yuma Road. Fulfillment center with robotics.
• Mesa: Higley and McDowell roads. Delivery station.
• Phoenix: 75th Avenue and Buckeye Road. Delivery station.
• Phoenix: 40th Street and University Drive. Delivery station.
• Phoenix: 59th Avenue and Lower Buckeye Road. Fulfillment center and delivery station focused on large products, such as TVs and furniture.
• Phoenix: 83rd Avenue and Roosevelt Street. Cross-dock facility that receives large orders of goods and sends them out to their respective fulfillment center. 
• Tempe: Priest Drive and Broadway Road. Delivery station.
• Goodyear: Indian School Road and Cotton Lane. Cross-dock facility. Planned to open in 2021.
• Surprise: Litchfield Road and Sweetwater Avenue. Delivery station. Planned to open in 2021.

Amazon also recently announced an expansion in its technology hub near Tempe Town Lake. The company plans to hire about 500 for the new building near Mill Avenue and Rio Salado Parkway. 

Reach reporter Joshua Bowling at [email protected] or 602-444-8138. Follow him on Twitter @MrJoshuaBowling.

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