Amazon - an amazing ballet of logistics has county moving forward FROM STAFF REPORTS
DINWIDDIE — A little more than a year later that the Dinwiddie Amazon Fulfillment Center sent out its first product — a Crock-Pot — to a customer in Michigan, the giant distribution center officially opened on Oct. 8, 2013. State and local representatives got their first glimpse into Amazon.com’s giant fulfillment center in Dinwiddie County, where millions of products have been shipped from since its opening in September 2012. The Dinwiddie center was one of eight added to the retail giant’s more than 40 U.S. fulfillment centers last year. The center’s more than 500 full-time employees are a slice of Amazon’s more than 20,000-strong national workforce. Amazon.com’s presence in both Dinwiddie and Chester has been a spark plug for the region. A recent hiring spree by the company that is expected to add 7,000 new jobs in 13 states translated into hundreds of new permanent jobs in the Dinwiddie facility. The announcement came months before the facility’s annual hiring event for seasonal workers for its busy holiday season. The two facilities represented a $135 investment to the region, and a more than $50 million investment in Dinwiddie. In Dinwiddie, the full-time employee base is about 500 workers. The facility expects to hire hundreds more for its busy holiday season. David Lewis, who started working at the 1.1 million-square-foot facility just after it opened, has seen the full-time employee base balloon from 150 to more than 500. The facility expects to hire hundreds more for its busy holiday season. The growth of Amazon has coincided with the welcomed job and economic growth in Dinwiddie, Lewis said. The 27-year-old said he now shops at the store’s site for his hunting accessories. “I remember one traffic light being in
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Dinwiddie. Now we have three just right here,” Lewis said. Lewis, who lives in the eastern part of the county, is one of around 80 employees on the center’s quality management team. The team’s job is to double-check the system by making sure what it says is available is physically stored. “We are probably checking about 2,000 bins per day,” Lewis said.
bed. Lewis and his team work with many other teams of employees who store, pick and package thousands of items. Handheld devices tells employees where to pick an item for shipment, and a computer system helps the packaging team ready the item to be shipped. “It has been amazing to interact with all of the people in the area, and
One of the main reasons Lewis left his warehouse job in South Richmond for Amazon was for his family. Not only is his commute much shorter, but his 10hour shifts put him home long before his nearly 2-year-old daughter goes to
throughout the state, and sometimes even across state lines,” Lewis said. “My favorite part ... is being part of a company that really goes that extra mile for the customer.” Sean Loso, the center’s general man-
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ager, said that the vast majority of the facility’s workforce is local. During the official opening ceremony, he called the partnership with Dinwiddie a valuable one. “Technology is only half of it. You can have all the technology in the world, but you still need people,” Loso said. “We’ve hired hundreds throughout this year ... and we will start hiring people in big mass quantities in the next couple of weeks.” Company spokesperson Kelly Cheeseman said that median pay inside the fulfillment centers is 30 percent higher than that of people who work in traditional retail stores. The base pay is complimented by stock grants as well as full-time benefits, including healthcare and 401K matching. Through a program called Career Choice, Amazon also offers to pre-pay up to 95 percent of tuition for courses related to in-demand fields, even if those skills are not relevant to a career at Amazon. “Dinwiddie County has been a great partner for us with the great workforce that they provided. Because of that workforce, we are able to ship more volume out and we added more space to provide our customers with more,” Loso said. In an effort to give back to the community, Loso said that the center has donated food to the local food bank, and donated Kindles to a local elementary school. “We are really proud of what we have accomplished here and
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