MAD 7 is one of six robotic logistics centers that Amazon has in Spain. With an area of more than 180,000 square meters, more than 1,500 employees and AWS technologies, it is ready to supply the world with more than 600,000 products. … A day at mass consumption events, such as Black Friday.
This center, which was opened in 2021, is located in the city of Illescas in the Toledo province, although its name brings it close to the Spanish capital. The reason lies in the way Amazon names its logistics centers, which is guided by the nearest international airport, which in this case is Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport.
Trucks arrive loaded with products that will later be distributed for delivery to customers.in a process that they start themselves from their mobile phones or computers by clicking on the purchase button, and that this Friday – in the middle of Black Friday – we were able to see in person in a visit organized by Amazon to these facilities.
This logistics center combines the work that can be seen, which its employees do with the help of robotic technologies and 15 kilometers of conveyor belts, with what cannot be seen, with AWS developments that help in the predictive and optimization part to speed up deliveries.
Smart shelves
Products leave the trucks on pallets at the unloading dock and are received by a robotic arm to remove them and place them in black plastic boxes called totes. There, they will travel along conveyor belts to the next stage of the process: storage.
This storage is done on yellow shelves, and the independent robots placed at their base move in a coordinated manner to prevent them colliding with each other and according to what the workers need.
The products are placed in them according to a system that allows us to respond to the way people buy “online”, to speed up the process of later collecting different items that are part of the same order.
That is, it is avoided to stock them, for example, by categories, as this can create bottlenecks when preparing orders if the demand for the same product is high. instead of, The shelf itself can hold books, Echo speakers, wallets, cologne, or headphoneswhich are stored in the compartments after the code is assigned, instead of devoting an entire shelf to the same product.
When a user places an order, the system determines the location of the product by its code, so that when the employee prepares it, the shelf that contains it will be located. If an order includes, for example, a total of five products, they can be distributed across up to five different shelves.
For him packaging, The matter moves on to another area where employees take the type of cardboard box or envelope (from more than 80 available options) that the system has detected that best adapts to the size or privacy of the objects, because they are too large or require additional protection. This choice also helps optimize space on the truck it is shipped with.
The package is marked with a label without customer identification data to proceed to the final stage, where the machine – now without human intervention – applies a final label with destination data to the package and from there it is sent along the conveyor belt to the corresponding loading dock.
Register Black Friday
Although Amazon customers can buy on this e-commerce year-round, key dates like Black Friday or Christmas cause a surge in orders, driven by discounts and offers. This year, the busiest period in the company’s logistics centers is from November 20 to December 1, before Christmas, coinciding with its promotions.
To manage all the work seen, Amazon uses AWS technology, and its business area focuses on cloud services, such as the relational database in the Amazon Aurora cloud, which records orders on the web and sends them to the logistics center, with real-time tracking, allowing the customer to check which stage the employees are actually at, Optimize order logistics.
The data is also used with the company’s other AI technologies to analyze purchasing patterns and anticipate high demand for a particular product, with the aim of ensuring there is sufficient stock in the warehouse. This is done using Amazon Neptune’s cloud graph database, which also optimizes rack storage.
The activity of the logistics center is monitored at the data level in a control center with the help of artificial intelligence and digital twins – virtual models that mimic the behavior of something in the real world to predict it. Two teams are responsible for them: one for operations and the other for maintenance, engineering and reliability, to make sure that everything is working properly, anticipating possible accidents and resolving outages in the shortest possible time.