KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany – Personnel from the 405th Army Field Support Brigade headquarters conducted a professional development staff visit to one of the facilities of a major worldwide logistics corporation recently to observe operations and see, first-hand, some of the latest innovations in transportation, logistics, safety and personnel management.

Led by the brigade labor advisor, Christine Schneider, more than a dozen staff members from the 405th AFSB visited the Amazon Fulfillment Center in West Kaiserslautern May 30 where they were provided with a comprehensive operational briefing and a 2-hour tour of the facility.

Frederic Le Pon is the operations manager for outbound shipping at the fulfillment center, which employs over 2,500 personnel and ships 2-3 million packages a week. Le Pon, a retired French Air Force captain with 30 years of service who was once stationed at Ramstein Air Base, greeted the 405th AFSB visitors and led them on the tour through the center.

“We have thousands of people working here,” said Le Pon. “It’s important for Amazon and for us to show our operations, here. It’s impossible to imagine all that’s goes on here without coming here and seeing it for yourself. It’s almost unbelievable, really.”

Le Pon said besides the 2,500 associates at the fulfilment center, there are over 23,000 robots in the four-levels of the facility, equivalent to about six football fields of robots. The center, which opened in 2022, manages about 22 million articles at any given moment. With 35,000 items shipped per hour, on average, the goal is 12 hours or less per item, start to finish. That includes processing, packaging, loading and shipping.

“We can’t afford to miss anything or make any mistakes,” said Le Pon, who has about 230 employees in his outbound shipping department. “One small mistake can affect the shipment of 7,000 items. In one minute, we can impact 7,000 customers.”

“I want us to be the best in Germany, which we were last month,” added Le Pon, who said the Kaiserslautern fulfillment center is one of the biggest in the country. “We went from worst to best in eight months.”

During the tour, Le Pon walked the group of visitors from the 405th AFSB from one end of the facility to the other. He showed them a couple of the packaging and processing areas on the first floor, and he took everyone up to the third floor, which is mostly operated by robots. He also walked the group to the shipping area in one of the far corners of the fulfillment center. He was quick to point out the shipping area and operations there are his responsibility. He said his team loads a hundred delivery trucks an hour during scheduled outbound shipping times.

“Our guide was great, very knowledgeable,” said Terry Bernas, a logistics management specialist at the brigade’s operations directorate (S-3). “It was amazing to hear from him on how efficient he expects his team to be and the standards he holds them to. With all that volume, the productivity level was unbelievable.”

“As a logistician, myself, to see how operations work at that fulfillment center and the way they do business was extremely valuable. I believe there are operational innovations we observed today that could be implemented into Army logistics and Army support operations in the future,” said Bernas.

The 405th AFSB is assigned to U.S. Army Sustainment Command and headquartered in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The brigade provides materiel enterprise support to U.S. forces throughout Europe and Africa – providing theater sustainment logistics; synchronizing acquisition, logistics and technology; and leveraging the U.S. Army Materiel Command materiel enterprise to support joint forces. For more information on the 405th AFSB, visit the official website and the official Facebook site.