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The Secret Lives of Amazon's Elves
theodp writes "If Amazon is Santa, says Gizmodo's Joel Johnson, then the 400 folks living in RVs outside the Coffeyville, KS fulfillment center at Christmas time are the elves. Amazon didn't always lure in 'workcampers' from the RV community with the promise of free campgrounds and $10.50-$11 an hour seasonal jobs. 'Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa,' explained tech nomad Chris Dunphy. 'There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren't really serious.' Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour round-trip commute to a grueling 10-to-12 hour shift, Cherie Ve Ard added. 'They'd get there exhausted.' The work wasn't exactly what Cherie had envisioned."
They accepted terms of employment. A willing employer got a willing employee. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this, if the employees are unhappy they can always get another job, no shortages of those!
Driving 45 minutes each direction (northern KY, near Cincinnati Airport). (And yes, I rode the motorcycle to work Dec. 24 -- just ask Chan, Ian or Jim. They all saw me). Safety tips, announcements, and stretching. And the day begins. I've been there (CVG1) for 18 months, and I'm still amazed at all the products we carry.
I'm making more money than I ever have before (I'm 43), the work is steady, benefits are nice (including the exercise I get working), and everyone has a good sense of professionalism. As for firing you for taking off sick (Huff. Post article), um, sorry, no. Not here. (See, someone does read the articles before posting!) Cheating on overtime? I'm going over my financial records right now, and the occasional mistake does get corrected. And I take off for the Men's room whenever I need to.
Fascinating article, though. Always wondered about our other operations. Sorry some of the campgrounds aren't so nice, hopefully that will improve.
Robots cost too much when compared to low-paid human labor. Also, robotics in such plants are still mostly experimental. I worked at several plants similar as described in the article. They were trying to introduce robots in one of them.
One robot was designated as "beer master". Its sole purpose was to pick beer crates. It usually jammed up at least twice a day. Most of the time it stood idle as the guy on forklift duty couldn't keep up with it.
The second robot (if you want to call it that) was extremely large. It was designed to handle (store, pick, sort and package) anything box-shaped. In the 6 months I was working there I never saw that machine running, aside from a few test runs.
Those very computers that decide the most optimal packing tend to screw up royally when one of the white collars upstairs feeds it the wrong dimensions. I remember my load being considerably oversized on more that one occasion due to someone missing a digit. Nor can they decide if the "this side up" marker can be safely ignored in order to make the load more compact and/or stable.
Robotics (for now) can only operate efficiently when their task contains few variables. Unless designers stop thinking up weird-sized packages and consumers stop mixing products around, the human factor will most likely remain.
I used to work for Amazon. Their fulfillment centers are pretty impressive. Before I started working there I would have never realized that so much though, planning and technology went into packing the right stuff into the right boxes. If you would have RTFA you should have gotten to the point where that little bit was discussed.
The other interesting thing is to use RVers to handle some of the seasonal demand. In some ways it is a little offensive though. RVers typically aren't looking for a steady paying job, but end up doing a little work at Amazon "for the experience" (ie they thought it might be fun). While there are lots of people out there that have no job, and have real bills to pay, and mouths to feed. But if they are offering $10/hr and people without jobs don't want to commute 4 hours a day for it, I guess that's just the free market being fair about it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Robots might make sense to handle their routine volume, but the holiday rush is probably cheaper to handle with humans which don't require the large capital expense.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What else do you want from a Huff Post article? That's where you go for this sort of thing. Complaining about the Huff Post being whiny is like pointing out factual errors in a Michael Moore movie or pointing out that rushlimbaugh.com seems to have a bias.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Robots might make sense to handle their routine volume,
I think not. From what I know of industrial robots, they can do repetitive tasks, but have no adaptability. Good on assembly lines, but useless when even the most basic decision-making is required.
I have to wonder what Amazon was thinking, building such a labor-intensive operation four hours from the nearest major labor pool.
I am not one to advocate socialism in any form, but capitalism only works when those who benefit from the system perform their social responsibility towards their employees and treat them right.
That IS socialism. --And anybody against it deserves to be treated like a slave because slavery is *exactly* what they're asking for. The primary argument against socialism always boils down to this: "Mine! I don't want to share!"
Great. When all the little capitalists are starving because somebody greedier has won Monopoly and turned the world into slave-land, I'll remind them when they come asking for a bread crust. "Look around you! This is YOUR fault. Are you beginning to learn yet why self-service doesn't work? --Or do you want to be stupid livestock for another dozen life times? We WILL repeat this until you learn."
I'm all for idiot FOX viewers being punished for being idiot FOX viewers, but I am not content when others have to put up with the fallout from the knuckle-dragging propaganda-swallowing moronics of the pack man.
Humn. Pac Man. I just got that. That only took twenty years. --The pie-shaped dude is the archetypal pack animal, locked into a state of stupid because his genetics make him easy to subjugate into a ridiculous life-long race after crumbs through a rat maze. The Ghosts. . ? Ha! That actually makes sense too, but it's an idea too alarming for most people to deal with so I'll pardon myself from trying to explain.
What a depressing metaphor. Sigh.
Happy New Year.
-FL
At the end of a conveyor belt, a worker took castings, turned, and removed the sprue with a punch press.
A salesman came in and said that there were neat advantages with a robot : It would never come in late, organize the shop, chase your wife, or sue. They bought one.
What was not mentioned was that the robot was perfectly willing to have its hand in the way of the press.
Now the worker takes castings and walks around the robot.
Their fulfillment centers are pretty impressive. Before I started working there I would have never realized that so much though, planning and technology went into packing the right stuff into the right boxes.
The basic system is a century old and was invented at Sears, Roebuck and Company, the first really big mail order operation. They had several city blocks in Chicago for what they called "The Works", their fulfillment center.
In the "schedule system" at Sears, orders came in, and each order was assigned a assembly bin for a 15-minute window. Picking tickets were generated for the various departments, each with the bin number and 15-minute window. The stock pickers in each department started on a new batch of tickets every 15 minutes, and as they picked items in their department, they attached the pick ticket to the item or a basket containing it, and sent it to the order assembly area by chute, conveyor, or pneumatic tube. At the order assembly area, incoming items were routed to the appropriate bin. At the end of each 15 minute window, each assembly bin was dumped to a basket, which went on a conveyor to the checking and accounting section. There, the items in the bin were matched against the order and the bill totaled up. The baskets then went to the packaging and shipping section and out of the Works.
Amazon's plant works about the same way, except that their computers know what's in inventory, so they don't have many "fails", where an item can't be found. They don't have to work to such a rigid clock-driven timetable, because the computers know when an order is fully assembled, and can allow more or less time depending on the complexity of the order. The basic concept, that a set of orders is being picked at any one time, picking orders fan out to departments, and items come back to an assigned bin for checking and packaging, remains the same.