Why Amazon is doubling down on robots at its massive Delaware fulfillment center

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In the coming months, thousands of Amazon workers in Wilmington will be joined by new “coworkers” who can regularly lift packages up to 50 pounds and don’t need breaks — because they are robots.

There are already about 6,000 robots working alongside humans inside the massive Delaware fulfillment center that runs 24/7. During an average week, the center receives and sends out about 5 million products.

Amazon is investing in more automation at the site, such as new robots that can help workers move containers of packages just before shipping — upgrades the company expects to have in place in time for the holiday shopping season.

“A robot will take that container [of] packages right to the dock door, where an associate will then load onto [the truck],” said Ken Jones, the fulfillment center’s site manager.

Safer for humans

The aim, Jones said, is to ease the physical strain on workers — reducing how much walking and heavy lifting employees do moving packages through one of the largest fulfillment centers in the nation.

Amazon officials say that automation does not replace human jobs, but shifts the role away from physical labor to quality management and robotics maintenance.

The company’s 3.6 million-square-foot center opened in 2021. A former General Motors manufacturing plant at the site was demolished several years ago.

Delaware offered a $4.5 million performance grant to Amazon in exchange for the investment. Amazon signed a 20-year lease for the building with industrial developer Dermody Properties.

Amazon has about 9,500 part-time and full-time employees across Delaware.

During President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war, the U.S. has imposed tariffs as high as 145% on imports from China. But Amazon didn’t notice any slowdown of products being processed at the Wilmington fulfillment center, Jones said.

Along the supply chain

Fulfillment centers are just one step in Amazon’s supply chain. They’re already a blend of automation and manual processes.

For example, if a container ship arrives at the Port of Wilmington filled to the brim with imports, it’s sent to a freight operation known as Amazon’s inventory replacement warehouses.

It’s then broken down into pallets of goods, which are then routed by truck to an Amazon fulfillment center like the one on Boxwood Road in Wilmington.

At the receiving dock, workers unload pallets stacked with everything from coconut water to shoes to vacuums. Items are unpacked, sorted and shelved — triggering systems to indicate the products appear as available to purchase online.

When customers order a product, a computer algorithm works backwards based on how long it takes to ship the product to arrive on time. It helps Amazon decide which fulfillment center to use for processing.

Pickers remove items from movable, robotic shelving units and pack each box by hand. A machine applies a shipping label.

Sorters then route boxes onto conveyor belts, which then drop through chutes at a pace of 1,000 boxes per hour. Drivers in delivery trucks take packages to customers’ doorsteps.

In both the picking and sortation areas, robots help workers move packages along.

Working side by side

Autonomous motorized robots known as drivers look like solid plastic pallets low to the ground. They wheel themselves over QR codes on the floor and are controlled by computer algorithms.

On its top, one of these robots can carry a shelving unit in the picking section or, in the sortation section, a single cardboard package that’s nearly ready for shipping.

Years ago, workers would walk miles each day to retrieve products themselves. But now, when attached to drivers, the shelving units move themselves across the fulfillment center’s cement floor and bring products to employees for packing.

There’s a single robotic arm attached to a platform used in the sortation section that works with the drivers to move packages along.

The large, robotic arm sweeps across a conveyor belt to pick up and sort packages that already have shipping labels on them. It uses suction cups to pick up the packages, uses a camera to scan the labels, and sets the packages on the drivers that wheel themselves to the right chute, where packages keep traveling to the next processing area.

There are still manual package sortation stations where workers pick up boxes from a conveyor belt and place them on those robotic drivers.

Those stations are usually reserved for high-demand periods like busy shopping seasons; the stations are only opened when the robotic arm section hits max capacity. On average, about 80% of packages are sorted by autonomous robots.

There are about two dozen of those robotic arms attached to the platforms in the sortation section working now. They can process 150% more packages than humans, in part because they don’t take breaks and run 24 hours a day.

The average package at the facility is 25 pounds or lighter. The robotic arms can lift up to 50 pounds if the suction cups have a good grasp.

“Instead of the associate being focused on the physical lifting, the role has now transferred to, ‘How do I keep the robots on the floor running?’” Jones said. “The automation allows for the associate to focus on quality inspection.”

The company is investing in new robotic arms on a different floor of the facility as its expansion plan.

The average nationwide hourly wage at a customer fulfillment center and operations job is $22 an hour. When benefits are included, the company estimates the value is $29 an hour.

Amazon declined to share how much the robots cost for initial purchase and maintenance. But through generative artificial intelligence the company is “optimizing our supply chain planning, forecasting and delivery routing as well as creating new capabilities in robotics and automation,” the company said.