The washing machine rides the lift for nine seconds. It’s got to hurry, because the refrigerator and the oven are worried about it.
Three can ride at the same time, each on a different level. The warehouse workers call the lift the paternoster, because it cares for each appliance with equal tenderness. What’s more, it never gets tired, and runs all the time. The washing machines and refrigerators ride alone, not guarded by any person. They all have the same final destination: an automatic high-bay warehouse, the tallest in Europe. From the outside it’s unprepossessing. Just a grey cube – a real skyscraper among warehouses. 46.5 metres high. 17 storeys. 6000 square feet. Upward. It towers over the low, brick buildings of Wronki, where a home appliance factory is located. On the grey exterior panels, the name ‘Amica’ is lit up in red neon. Inside, there’s a crowd. Washing machines, refrigerators, ovens, cookers, and other appliances – a maximum of 230,000 large appliances on 17 levels. In itself, this might not be so spectacular, if the warehouse weren’t a living organism, one that never sleeps, never rests. And just one person runs it. Or, rather, tries not to interfere with it.
“The warehouse can’t hurt itself – it’s risk-averse,” says Darek Bartkowiak, one of three operators, who manage the warehouse in eight-hour shifts. “It’s completely digitalized, so it doesn’t make bad decisions. If something doesn’t add up, it stops and lets us know.”
Bartkowiak sits at a desk in a space in the hall attached to the warehouse. He watches the warehouse through cameras and on his computer. He doesn’t need to go inside. Sometimes he doesn’t enter it for several days. The warehouse is working all the time. In complete darkness, in coolness. In silence. You don’t hear any footsteps, nothing bumps anything else, voices aren’t raised. There are no people. The warehouse is locked shut. The placement of pallets on almost 26,000 shelves is managed by an algorithm. It’s untouched by humans. That’s why the warehouse is infallible. It doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t make bad decisions. It knows what goes where, how to arrange everything so that it’s as easy as possible to pick up later. It fills orders with absolute precision. Eight washing machines on the 17th level in the sixth row. Done. Four refrigerators on the eighth, a rack on the third. Ready. Tidily, without nerves, at an even pace. A maximum of 120 pallets an hour can enter the warehouse, and as many as 160 can come out. For that, you used to need a dozen people and several forklifts.
“Once you’d need to shift fifteen rows of appliances to find something at the back. So many people. And every employee had their assignment,” Darek explains.
Now the work is done by five stacker cranes – orange steel arms, 45-metres high, with platforms attached that have feeders like those of a forklift. The cranes run along the shelves on rails. The platforms attached to them, meaning the lifts, run up and down with pallets from the ground floor to the 17th level. Using extending forks, they pack everything in as tight as it will go. The cranes are identical, but completely independent from each other. Each works at its own rhythm. They slide along the rails at 180 metres a minute, and within the shelves assigned to them, they set out the appliances as needed. When production is slow or there aren’t many orders – meaning not many appliances are coming into the warehouse or coming out – there’s no rest. No boredom. At those times, the warehouse tidies up. Meaning the algorithm optimizes the placement of appliances. It shifts the washing machines, refrigerators and ovens around, so that everything is easily accessible.
Plus you always know where it is. The computer lets you find any appliance in a few seconds. In the thicket of 200,000 appliances, the algorithm always flawlessly finds a particular washing machine in the right colour. When ordered, it brings it down to the bottom, and gets it ready to ship.
Red, green
The computer screen looks like a spreadsheet from the 90s: ugly. But it gives Bartkowiak a view of the whole warehouse. Squares in five rows show the stacker cranes. You can see them moving. If all is well, it’s lit up in green; if there’s an error, red. Bartkowiak and the other Darek (there are two Dareks working as guardians of the warehouse) or Marcin (on the third shift) don’t have to observe a lot of parameters. It’s supposed to be green. But sometimes there’s an error.
“Oh, now the foil has run out at the entrance, I see it here,” Bartkowiak says. “It’s lit up red, but they’ll put more on in a minute. I don’t even have to go there.” He doesn’t get up from his desk.
Everything is checked at the entrance to the warehouse. Is the pallet sticking out, is it heavier than the maximum allowed? They can’t exceed 550 kilograms.
“Sometimes it’s 551,” says Bartkowiak. “Because, for example, a new washing machine model turns out to be heavier. Then it’s over. The warehouse won’t let it in, because safety is the top priority. You have to take a layer off and put it back into the warehouse.”
You also have to make sure the foil hasn’t come off the pallet. The sensors check whether anything is sticking out, but sometimes they miss something.
“We try to catch everything with the electronics,” says Krzysztof Citkowski of the operations continuity department. “But when the foil starts coming off, it can make a kind of tail. That can get caught. We try to stop it before it goes into the warehouse, but sometimes it goes in with a tail, and we have a problem. It’s only when putting it on the shelf that the stacker crane notices, becomes alarmed and stops.”
The warehouse always notices problems, but never tries to solve them. It doesn’t take the risk. It stops in mid-step, with its forks extended. A huge, defenceless robot. Frozen. That’s when a human is needed.
“When the warehouse says what ails it, I can react,” Bartkowiak says. “I see right away on the displays what’s going on. And we fix it. Because it won’t do anything in these situations; it all depends on us.”
“Does it always tell you?” I ask.
“Always,” says Bartkowiak. “What, is it going to hide from me?”
So let’s say that a tail develops on the 16th level. The stacker crane’s feeder notices it, stops and calls for human help.
“Then we send a three-person team,” Krzysztof says. “One stands at the bottom for safety, and two climb up. They have safety lines, and go as high as they need. They get rid of the tail.”
Completely safe
Inside, when you look up, the warehouse looks like a technological Gothic cathedral. Your head can easily start spinning. The shelves seem to stretch into infinity; it’s hard to see the final, 17th level, and the pale light from the exhaust vents. The essence of the warehouse is the warehouse itself. Its mutability. Constant, uninterrupted, monotonous movement. In the warehouse there are no walls, only the steel skeletons of shelves, whose loads change, so it never looks the same. From outside, the warehouse is protected by a thin layer of panels. With its height, it has to be resistant to wind. And it is. It has no fear of gusts up to 150 km/h. It also has no fear of fire, because it’s protected by 23,000 sprinklers connected with 42 kilometres of pipes, which switch on automatically at 68°C. Its own water storage means instant supply. If something caught fire – and there are things that can, since the warehouse contains wooden pallets and cardboard packaging – the column of flame would reach the ceiling in two minutes. The warehouse is also strengthened from below. Underground, its foundation is formed by 1400 reinforced concrete piles with a total length of 20 kilometres. They were covered with concrete on a chequerboard pattern. This lasted four months, because concrete expands and contracts, so you have to do it in stages. All so the warehouse won’t collapse under its own weight. The colossus stands securely, even though its innards are in constant motion.
But some elements of the warehouse are a nod toward humans. For example, the lights. Naturally, the stacker cranes don’t need them. When they’re alone, they work in the dark. Oxygen. A mezzanine for walking around. Steps to the 17th level, leading to an observation deck on the roof. Yet people don’t go in very often. Only when they absolutely have to. In daily life, they interact with the cranes through a screen. They watch each one closely.
“Have you given each of the cranes a name?” I ask.
“No. I mean, they’re 30-tonne robots,” Bartkowiak says, bewildered.
Robots who tell humans what ails them. And who help them when they’re not dealing with a tail.
Translated by Nathaniel Espino
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