Amazon opens Indiana's first fulfillment center for same-day deliveries in Greenwood

Amazon opened its first mini fulfillment center in Indiana last month, a move that the company says will allow it to deliver items to customers in as little as five hours, the company announced Thursday.

The facility on Chaney Avenue in Greenwood stocks popular items such as charging cables and face wash that can be delivered quickly to residents in central Indiana. 

The roughly 100,000-square-foot facility is about 1/10th the size of a traditional fulfillment center.

Amazon officials also they've hired hundreds of full-time and part-time workers to run the center.

The announcement of faster delivery times comes during one of the busiest times for the company, as well as on the heels of a tornado that destroyed an Amazon facility in Kentucky, killing at least six people.

The deaths raised questions and concerns about Amazon's extensive use of contractors, which makes it difficult to account for people missing, the New York Times reported.

The e-commerce giant, which employs nearly one million people across the country, prides itself on getting a wide-variety of items to customers as quickly as possible. While American shoppers have come to rely on and expect fast deliveries from Amazon, the service comes at an expense to its workforce.

The company has faced multiple controversies around its delivery service, including reports of drivers urinating in vans to make deliveries on time.

Last year Amazon began opening same-day delivery facilities that allowed the company to deliver commonly-purchased items to nearby customers in Philadelphia, Phoenix, Orlando and Dallas. Those facilities expanded to Nashville and Washington D.C. late last year. 

Contact IndyStar reporter Binghui Huang at 317-385-1595 or Bhuang@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Binghuihuang