Helped By Robotics, Amazon Expands Windsor Facility

Shelved racks of products move in a ghost-like ballet, seemingly by themselves but aided by robotics and computers that direct them in and out of aisles crisscrossing the 855,000 square-foot Amazon Inc. warehouse.

Overhead, a network of conveyor belts moves packages that ultimately end up in the hands of customers in New England and elsewhere in the United States.

Opened in 2015, the high tech fulfillment center — just past decaying tobacco barns dating to a long-gone era — has expanded and more than tripled its workforce, to 1,500 employees.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy returned to Amazon Thursday for what he called “grand opening 2” to help celebrate the expansion.

He cited Connecticut’s location in the Northeast, between large cities and nearby suburbs that provide Amazon and other retailers with tens of millions of customers.

“Connecticut is exactly where it needs to be between Boston and New York for all fulfillment purposes,” he said.

As with everything associated with Amazon, which disrupted the retail industry with its expansive online reach, the numbers at the Windsor warehouse are staggering. It can fit more than 20 football fields and has a capacity of more than 15 milion products that run the gamut of what consumers order online: toys, clothes, electronics, books and almost everything else.

Hundreds of thousands of items are shipped from the Windsor facility daily.

Key to the expansion is Amazon’s reliance on robotics, bar codes and scanning that control the movement of products that are stacked on yellow shelving units and go to workers who box up the items and send them on their way along the conveyor belts. Previously, workers had to walk to the items, but the technology now eases their work while increasing their productivity.

The goal is to reduce the time it takes to deliver items to customers, “how quickly we get the item out the door,” said Richard Dyce, director of operations.

And though robots are seen as robbing people of jobs, the opposite is the case with warehouse technology. Amazon increased the number of workers at Windsor as it boosted the use of robotics, Dyce said.

“By having all this technology here, it allows people to be much more efficient and it really allows us to process more in this building, which requires more employees,” he said.

The same is true at other companies that are trying to “play catch up” with the online retail giant, said Fergal Glynn, vice president of marketing at 6 River Systems, a Waltham, Mass.-based company that develops mobile robots and cloud software for warehouses.

Technology such as large capacity for data storage, algorithms that forecast consumer behavior, GPS satellite tracking and robotics make it possible for companies to rapidly increase in size and extend their reach into new markets, he said.

“Every warehouse owner you talk to needs more people,” he said. “We can’t get enough to fill these jobs.”

Amazon hasn’t disclosed how much it’s invested at the Windsor site, but it’s opening a similar sized fulfillment center in North Haven next year. And it operates a “sortation center” in Wallingford that delivers packages to consumers.

The goal is to use technology and human labor to move enormous amounts of consumer goods as fast as possible.

“Every minute, nearly every second counts,” Dyce said.

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