A Year in The Works: A Record of Engineering and Leadership Experience at Amazon

Abstract

This record of study presents the intern’s engineering and leadership experiences that took place over an internship at Amazon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Engineering program at Texas A&M University (TAMU). During this doctoral internship, the intern had the opportunity to work with the Advanced Technology (AT) team under Amazon Robotics (AR) and with Amazon Go where the intern was the lead engineer for wet fixtures in the hardware infrastructure team. The intern led two projects, the Single Rack Freezer (SRF) and geographical expansion of Amazon Go stores. Throughout the internship at AT, the intern worked on Modular Automated Storage and Retrieval System (MASRS) project. Specifically, the intern worked on the idea creation phase, the fast prototyping and conceptual design of MASRS, the design of end effectors, the design of the robotic structure, and the design of the safety fence that surrounded it. In addition to the MASRS project, the author supported the end-to-end integration of robotics tote palletizers in Amazon Fulfillment Centers (FCs). This work included Value Stream Mapping (VSM) of the potential five FCs, working with operations and general managers, and creating an economic analysis for the FCs. These economic analyses were later used to evaluate the project proposal estimate. The key outcomes of Doctor of Engineering (DE) internship were noted as follows: 1) The student fulfilled all internship objectives. 2) The student learned and applied technical, design, and engineering skills. 3) The student developed connections among groups from different technical disciplines and worked to codify cross-functional teams. 4) The student learned leadership skills, and further developed these skills by internalizing Amazon’s Leadership Principles. 5) The student gained experience in starting new ideas, preparing business studies, and leading projects to the next phase. The author also gained experience in writing business documents, white papers, and Press Release – Frequently Asked Questions (PR-FAQs). 6) The student learned to own, lead, and manage product design from the idea stage through to production.