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Robots In Amazon's Warehouses Are Already Making a Huge Difference (qz.com)
Amazon acquired Kiva, a robotics company for a sum of $775 million in 2012, and started to use robots in its warehouses in late 2014. At the time, the idea was that it will make inventory management more efficient. It's actually doing an impressive job. The "clip to ship" process used to take around 60-75 minutes when human employees were taking care of things, now the robots are doing the same job in 15 minutes. From a Quartz report: These robots are not only more efficient but they also take up less space than their human counterparts. That means warehouse design can eventually be modified to have more shelf space and less wide aisles. At the end of the third quarter of 2015, Amazon was using 30,000 Kiva robots across 13 warehouses. Each Kiva-equipped warehouse can hold 50% more inventory per square foot than centers without robots. In turn, the company's operating costs have been sliced by 20% -- or almost $22 million -- per warehouse. If Kiva robots are dispatched to the rest of the 110 Amazon warehouses, the tech giant could save almost $2.5 billion, according to Deutsche Bank. However, since it takes $15-$20 million to install robots in each warehouse, the one-time savings is expected to be closer to $800 million.
We must at all costs keep them from having access to rifle emojis!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Discuss.
How many employees can they fire in the process? I assume they're not keeping the same amount of employees as before as some tasks are be relegated to robots.
Next step should be to design robots to buy stuff online, otherwise with all jobs automated who is going to buy from Amazon?
The robot also doesn't steal the inventory, spend time babbling to friends, check facebook, twitter, etc, doesn't want a raise in pay when the company is experiencing bad times, doesn't start reproducing with other higher/lower ranking employees, will not steal data, can't be bribed, etc, beg the supervisor for a promotion, etc.
But don't worry, continue to oppose progress.
Bury your head in the sand and shout NO CUTBACKS, NO CONCESSIONS, and keep demanding that pay always goes up economic circumstances be damned.
People complain about inventory pickers' and shippers' jobs being lost instead of complaining that inventory picking and shipping for Amazon are grueling jobs that are too physically demanding and don't pay enough. Who wants to hear the same complaints over and over? Now we have a variety.
how did they teach the robots to ride on segways? Even people haven't learned how to do that.
Rich people own robots to do what the poor man used to do. Feast upon the misery.
In about 1982, when I was seven years old, my grandpa told me to study computers and robotics, because that's where the jobs would be when I grew up. He was not wrong.
LOL, when my brain tried to type "grew", my fingers, out of habit, typed "grep". It seems I HAVE been working with computers a lot.
Might be great cost savings and all...but how many more Hard drives am I going to have to RMA as DOA because the damn robots aren't using any fucking packing materials when shipping a bare drive. Not even a fucking bubble wrap bag around the static bag (at least there's a static bag) and enough space between the drive and shipping box to turn the damn thing into a friggen maraca! ! 4th one this year just arrived today!
I've spent many years in the AWS (Automated Warehousing Solutions) industry. I've seen automated warehouses with huge industrial cranes moving 500 pound drums and tiny little pill box pickers. I've seen systems run 24x7 with almost no human intervention unless a robot drops something. How the hell did it take them this long to get some basic pickers running.
I can only think their warehouses are just a clusterfuck of different items in the same bin or whatever they call it. If so their inventory system was shit to begin with.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
"Savings" also means "less money for workers to spend in their local economy".
We're making radical changes to the whole cycle of "wages => purchases => revenues => wages => ..." cycle. Yes, it has happened before, but never at this speed, never at this timescale, never at this scale of number of jobs. This may not end well.
in 1981, when I was in high school, several of my friends and I took the typing class because we believed computer were going to be a huge thing
that was the first time teacher ever had more than one male student
we also had a computer club where we shared a TRS-80
I'm glad for the typing class & the Z80 assembly I did in computer club, still useful!
Who's going to buy the stuff made and shipped by the robots? Oh, wait - I'm a Luddite, I forgot.
Those robotic systems are made to upgrade warehouses that were designed for people. Yes they're faster but they should be much faster than that if the warehouses were designed for the machines.
What if you really designed the warehouse from the ground up for totally automated systems? Why have robots at all? Wouldn't it be faster to put all the products on conveyor belts like a giant "vending machine"?
They keep fucking up and acting like a bunch of pricks. Arbitrary minimum orders, intentionally sitting on orders for days before eventually shipping them so they don't to quote a CSR "go out too soon". Insane power trips designed to cow people into submitting to prime subscriptions ... Try ordering Star Wars of all things FFS without a Prime subscription from Amazon.
When you finally do order something they will completely hide your order from the order history, not bother to ship when they say and not provide any explanation as to why.
But hey at least they are cutting labor costs with robots... I get infinitely better service ordering from humans on eBay and will never waste my time with Amazon again.
They will fill the warehouses with nitrogen to prevent fire hazards and theft from cockroaches, rats and those pesky humans.
I know no one really dreams of working in a warehouse filling boxes, or in a factory making steel or whatever. But, society here in the first world has been based for decades on the idea of wealth transfer and stable lifetime employment. Some examples:
- 30 year fixed mortgages are designed to be painful in the beginning but manageable over time because of increasing income.
- Manufacturers give auto loans with the assumption that people have the monthly income stream needed to pay them off over an extended time.
- Retirement under the pension system is dead for most, but for the lucky few, pension based retirement's payoff is dependent on years of service.
- Retirement under the DIY 401(k)/IRA system requires lifetime, increasing contributions commensurate with your income to ensure stable retirement income later.
- Car and other heavy goods manufacturers assume people will be able to purchase replacement heavy goods throughout their lives, and maybe someone who's worked a long time will buy a Cadillac instead of a Chevrolet for example.
- Basically every consumer business relies on people being able to purchase more and better things over time, again due to increasing income.
I really wonder what Amazon, home builders, supermarkets, car manufacturers, etc. will do when almost everyone cannot depend on a reasonably stable work life anymore. Personally, the reason why I buy things is because I'm somewhat confident that I will have a job for the near term. If I didn't have that confidence, I'd close my wallet as any other rational actor would do. Now, combine this fact with the slow creep of unemployment both from the low and the high end. Examples:
- Robots replacing fast food workers, warehouse workers, factory workers
- Cloud and automation replacing IT workers
- Offshoring replacing IT and software developers
Since socialism will never take hold in the US until things are at the French Revolution level, what are we going to do with all the unemployable people? It's not nice to say, but there are a group of people who are absolutely incapable of doing anything beyond warehouse work or factory work. Heck, there are corporate employees who are incapable of doing anything outside a narrow processing-type job description. For these people, I do kind of wish for a return to the pre-automation days when you had 10,000+ people working in a steel mill, or another 10,000+ just churning out paperwork at a corporate job. Those people earned a decent middle class salary, and had a good life. I doubt anyone growing up now is going to have it so good.
Not sure how this fits into this discussion but I was thinking about a satire Mad Magazine had of the movie Camelot. This story is called Can-A-Lot about a canning company, its CEO was Arthur, president emeritus was Melvin. Artists drew characters like those in the movie, re-wrote lyrics to fit this story of the canning company (Camelot I believe it was called) that takes place in modern times. Of course Arthur's adversary was the union leader (Lancelot I think). Then to deal with this, Arthur replaced all the workers with robots (drawn typical mechanical men with lightbulb noses). Eventually pushed to robots to work longer hours and they begin breaking down. One of Arthur's board members suggested it's cheaper to simply replace instead of repair a broken robot. Arthur: "This is the best idea I have!" His board member, "your idea?" Arthur, "glad you like it."
Later in story the overworked robots revolt and burn down the factory, Arthur is left with nothing like in the movie.
mfwright@batnet.com
For decades, we never saw this flaw because of growth. There was ALWAYS places to grow. I don't know where the growth comes from now. The planet just cant have exponential growth forever.
The answer should have been space, but after we "won" the space race, we stopped and sat on our thumbs for thirty years.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Isn't that supposed to be a Good Thing?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The list of benefits are a lot of back-end numbers we don't see and can't verify. If these Kiva robots are saving Amazon so much money, why aren't item prices dropping? Why does Walmart still often beat Amazon's prices? Why did Amazon suddenly and silently increase the free shipping minimum threshold from any $35 order, to $49 of only merchandise shipped via Amazon? This price jump even coincides with the biggest DEcrease in oil prices in decades.
In short, I'm HIGHLY skeptical they're actually getting the huge benefits they claim.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
they work for peanuts people.. peanuts!!!!
Just another second banana
You say "them" - like everybody else who is about to find out they are "them" or will be shortly. Unless you are a capitalist *you are "them"*. I'm a 6-figure making IT specialist with broad knowledge - and I feel concerned. Ones abilities are secondary to "the market" - as well as to biases. Above 40 you can easily fall through the cracks no matter your qualification (unless it's really extraordinary AND happens to be in demand too). There are lots of factors beyond your control.
Plenty of high-paid people who were laid off in their fifties who ranted about the lazy people unwilling to work found out that "them" is them when they were laid off and job application after application was rejected, often without even getting a response.
You have been assimilated to join the collectives.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Sure, who wouldn't want to save even $800,000,000! If Amazon had any real human compasion, they funnel that savings into programs for the now unemployed folks that these robots created! WTF?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
My job training in HVAC service/installation and property management is safe. My job in an HVAC manufacturer's warehouse, not so much. I'm okay with that as I transition from latter to former.
If you like working with your hands, train in HVAC, plumbing, carpentry or electrical service and installation. Those jobs are never, ever going away. The skills required will evolve as major building systems evolve but pulling wires, replacing pipes, brazing in refrigerant lines will not.
it's all robots and warehouses and picking and packing and smug Jeff B raking in the zillions . . . . . until everyone has a 3Dprinter or other Star Trek-style replication device. THEN what?