An inside look at Sioux Falls’ new Amazon fulfillment center

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - The new Amazon fulfillment center north of Sioux Falls is running at partial capacity right now....but they are looking to ramp up full operations as soon as possible. Part of that depends on finding enough workers.

Those new employees will be assisted by some new, very focused, technology.

We got an inside look a little earlier today.

To say the new Amazon fulfillment center is large would be an understatement.

“We have 699.000 square feet, it’s 100 feet tall. The entire population of South Dakota can fit in the building if we give ourselves three feet around.” Tim Choate is the general manager of this Amazon facility and he tells us when it hits its maximum operating capacity it will be running 24 hours a day...and that 12 million packages a week will be leaving from here...heading wherever the customer lives. “We are here to deliver same day and next day shipping to customers in Sioux Falls and the tri-state area as well as North and South Dakota.”

Right now, Amazon is working to recruit new employees.

“We are hiring now. we are looking for folks to come and join the Amazon team.” Amazon spokesperson Scott Seroka says the employees will be the driving force here....and the sooner they have more workers....the sooner more work can be done. “The more people we have working here, the more packages we can get in, the better we can serve our customers.”

But with 12 million packages a week being the goal for this facility....it will be a lot to keep track of.....and a lot to find in the first place. This area is so massive, how will the workers find everything? Well in some cases: they won’t. Amazon has as part of the team a series of robots that can receive order requests then access a database, locate the item and bring the item to the worker that needs it for whatever order they’re working on.

“Instead of saying how do I sift through all of these individual items...it says go ahead and you will find that item on this shelf and this is the type of item that you were requesting.”, said Vincent Gardner with Amazon.

In the words of one Amazon staffer we talked to today, they are ecstatic to be in Sioux Falls and to get going.