AMAZON WEB SERVICES

Amazon Web Services brings fulfillment center tours at scale through virtual reality

Facing a four-week backlog of fulfillment center customer tours, AWS used digital twin technology and Meta Quest to deliver a virtual reality tour experience—showcasing its technologies anytime and anywhere.

THE RESULTS

On-Demand Access

AWS customers visit fulfillment centers for guided tours, offering them a look at how Amazon fulfills millions of packages daily.

The Amazon Fulfillment Center Virtual Reality Experience delivers an immersive, personalized experience of Amazon fulfillment centers accessible to customers worldwide. Four-week wait times for tours are now on-demand, through VR. In-person logistics, such as travel, is no longer a constraint. Customers are now considering how they can recreate the experience for their own industry.

20K+

tours made through the VR experience

10K+

customers reached via third-party events

The Challenge

Amazon Web Services (AWS) serves a broad range of customers, from startups and small to medium-sized businesses to large enterprises and government entities across all industries. They include businesses from retail, manufacturing, media and education. Many are interested in seeing AWS technology that powers Amazon up close, including Amazon’s 175 fulfillment centers around the world.

AWS fulfillment center tours feature live demonstrations of advanced technologies, including IoT applications for maintenance operations, AI-powered supply chain automation, generative AI solutions for enhancing customer service experiences, and analytics platforms for real-time operational management.

However, not every business is located near a fulfillment center and has the time to travel.

About the company

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile and lower costs.

Industry

Technology

VR app interface showing recorded immersive training sessions.

WHY MR

Why Meta

AWS chose Meta Quest 3S for 3 reasons:

Immersion: AWS wanted to recreate an experience that was as close to a real fulfilment center tour, virtually. The team found that Meta Quest headsets provided the best immersive experience for customers.
Ease of use: Simplicity was key for AWS. Meta Quest 3S meant customers could quickly, seamlessly access its virtual experience on demand. The team plans on exploring Meta Horizon management solutions for single sign-on for its VR tour, as well as remote device management in future.
High-quality visuals and processing: High-definition resolution and fast GPU processing power helped to showcase AWS technologies.

Abhishek Srivastav,
Principal Solutions Architect at AWS

“

The quality and experience Meta Quest headsets offer in terms of immersivity and interactivity for our customers is top-notch. It helps our customers have a high-quality immersive experience on our tours.

The Solution

To meet demand, AWS launched a VR tour. The Meta and AWS teams spent 18 hours scanning an 800,000 sq ft fulfillment center, creating a digital twin using 3D spatial mapping technology from Matterport. They enhanced it with an immersive layer using the Treedis platform. “Our objective was to showcase the complete journey of a package enabled by AWS technology, starting from when it arrives from third-party sellers, through to its delivery after a customer places an order on Amazon.com,” says Abhishek Srivastav, Principal Solutions Architect at AWS.

To build a personalized, interactive experience, Meta and AWS leveraged generative AI using Amazon Bedrock. The entire tour was recorded live in-person via green screen. Through voice commands powered by Amazon Nova Sonic, customers can navigate the tour and obtain in-depth information about every phase of fulfillment. For example, a manufacturing manager could experience a tour emphasizing real-time reporting features, whereas an executive might delve into more comprehensive operational workflow details.

Finally, AWS chose Meta Quest to deliver its new virtual reality tour experience. Headsets are shipped to customers. Just like in real life, they begin the experience by seeing a fulfillment center from the entrance gate. Following a briefing in the training room, they walk to various points of interest at different stages of the fulfillment lifecycle and get to see operations in vivid detail.

On-demand availability means the virtual tour experience offers immediate access compared to month-long wait times for in-person tours.

Abhishek Srivastav,
Principal Solutions Architect at AWS

“

Meta Quest has helped us satisfy demand, and make it easier for customers to experience our fulfillment centers. Customers can now enjoy a tour at their location, meaning we’ve been able to scale to tens of thousands of people.

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