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The Almighty Buck

Robots In Amazon's Warehouses Are Already Making a Huge Difference (qz.com) 183

Posted by msmash from the it's-coming dept.
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.
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Robots In Amazon's Warehouses Are Already Making a Huge Difference More

Robots In Amazon's Warehouses Are Already Making a Huge Difference

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  • The takeover has started! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Friday June 17, 2016 @02:23PM (#52338587)

    We must at all costs keep them from having access to rifle emojis!

  • Next step - robots to buy from Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Friday June 17, 2016 @02:29PM (#52338639)
    Next step should be to design robots to buy stuff online, otherwise with all jobs automated who is going to buy from Amazon?

  • Progress (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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 da

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

      If Amazon wants to keep selling (and not just shipping), then someone's got to buy and for that to happen, the very same people need to be paid.

      The people demanding raises don't just do so because they need more luxury, you know. Some? Sure! But certainly not all and probably not most.

      There's going to be some interesting times ahead.

    • Re:Progress (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Friday June 17, 2016 @03:14PM (#52339057)

      1) progress is in the eye of the beholder. To be a bit flip, if i broke into your house and stole your TV, that's certainly progress... to me. You may feel differently.

      2) Go read about actually working in an Amazon warehouse. There is no time for chitchat. You're tracked. You're timed. It's hot. People pass out. Your back will be hurting. You're lucky if you eat lunch much less checking facebook or twitter. And you do this, puppet on a string, for a small hope of getting a full time job, so you get benefits so you can actually take your kid to see a doctor once in a while. And you want to complain to Bezos? well, technically you're far from an employee. You're a contractor, probably that company working for another contractor, far removed from the "amazon way".

      Don't use strawmen of lazy people sitting on their ass in the warehouse, hoping to get cash as they eat bonbons. No Amazon warehouse is like that. Its a very hard, very demanding job. But, people take it because they'd rather hurt their bodies than not eat. Than their kids not eat.

      • There is no time for chitchat. You're tracked. You're timed. It's hot. People pass out. Your back will be hurting. You're lucky if you eat lunch much less checking facebook or twitter. And you do this, puppet on a string, for a small hope of getting a full time job, so you get benefits so you can actually take your kid to see a doctor once in a while. And you want to complain to Bezos? well, technically you're far from an employee. You're a contractor, probably that company working for another contractor, far removed from the "amazon way".

        You make an excellent point as to why this work is better done by robots.

    • 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.

      A robot requires at least one expensive backup, you're not bringing in any joe schmoe off the streets to fill in when it's down. A robot requires increasing maintenance as it ages, even moreso when the manufacturer reveals the flashy upgrade. A robot does not increase in value, it only decreases over time. A robot only does what its design permits it to do, and even then it performs its duties extremely literally. A robot will need to be replaced with a different machine when the task changes. A robot,

      • And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead

      • > A robot requires at least one expensive backup, you're not
        > bringing in any joe schmoe off the streets to fill in when it's down.

        OK, have a backup, or even *TWO* backups. Let's say you're running a 24x7 operation
        * There are 52 weeks in a year, with 5 workdays each
        * Subtract 10 mandatory statutory Holidays, and you're down to 50 working weeks per employee per year
        * Assume a minimum 2 weeks vacation per year per employee, and you're down to 48 working weeks per employee per year
        * At 40 hours per week,

  • Side benefit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Friday June 17, 2016 @02:34PM (#52338699)

    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.

  • Rich people own robots to do what the poor man used to do. Feast upon the misery.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      this is not a long term problem. However i do agree that in the short term it needs addressing.

    • Re:All Your Job Are Belong To Us (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17, 2016 @02:54PM (#52338875)

      One solution would be to have the robots be more assertive in taking over a human's job. Instead of firing the person, let the robot kill whoever it displaces.

  • I'm surprised it took so long (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jlechem ( 613317 ) on Friday June 17, 2016 @02:42PM (#52338779) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • I've seen automated warehouses with huge industrial cranes moving 500 pound drums and tiny little pill box pickers.

      Those cranes are *fast* too. My experience is mostly with with HK (now Dematic) systems - it's cool as hell watching one of those 110-foot tall monsters running up and down the aisles.
    • I don't think you're being very fair to Amazon, their warehouses have had lots of automation prior to Kiva, conveyor, sorters, put walls, etc. I think the thing you aren't considering is that an Amazon warehouse has many many skus with few picks per sku per day. As you should know, this kind of sparse picking is a challenge to automate cost effectively. Sure they could have put in other goods to man solutions, but they would have spent more than paying humans, Kiva is a better fit for their problem space

    • I used to work in a warehouse that shipped medical supplies to hospitals. Crushed boxes were everywhere, to the point where box edges were folded over on themselves and you often had to yank them apart with all your might. Damages were the norm, and they got shipped. The attitude there was, if the customer didn't like the condition of the supplies they received, they could send them back. Yes, it was indeed a clusterfuck of busted items, and filthy to boot.

      To be fair, many of the manufacturers packaged

  • remember everything that savings mean (Score:4, Informative)

    by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Friday June 17, 2016 @02:58PM (#52338907)

    "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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gordo_1 ( 256312 )

      Yeah I think everyone gets it, but don't you think you're being a bit overly dramatic about Amazon warehouse pickers? Think of all the paper shufflers personal computers put out to pasture 30 years ago. That had a much bigger impact than the few thousand seasonal warehouse pickers that will be impacted by this. Society will survive.

      • But Amazon is just part of a larger movement.
        If you can't see that in,say, thirty years a majority of work done by people will be automated, you're not thinking clearly.
        He's correct in that this is a drastic paradigm shift. I see it as follows:

        Horse to car: Guy making buggy whips retrains to make car stuff: 1 to 1 tradeoff, using retraining, net zero change
        Computer introduced: Guy doing paperwork retrains, maybe fifteen guys replaced by one guy, but fourteen more jobs opened in various fields by the compute

        • Imagine what it will do to countries that are heavily invested in manufacturing, like China?
          I know they are already doing a lot of automation over there now, but it is just getting started.
          As the tech gets more mature and becomes a commodity, automation via robots and computers will put lots of people out of work.

          I bet the Chinese are planning on this eventuality.
          I know the Japanese are planning on it...
        • Maybe that story is still being written, and we don't yet know where all the workers displaced by robots went. I imagine many will go into management, because they know their industry and were on their way up anyway. Some will keep their jobs because robots are stupid and will need help solving their stupid mistakes. Some will go back to school and retrain for something else, perhaps something about robots. Some will retire because they were going to soon anyway. And the next generation will mostly avoid th

      • It's just one industry. I chose amazon because that's this thread. Want to talk about doctors losing to robotic surgeons? or lawyers, who need years of expensive school AND accreditation, are already losing jobs, and Watson is rearing his head? Or service industry, where tablets at tables lower the number of people needed (you have maybe 8 servers instead of 10-12 waiters). Or transportation? Apple, google, delphi, Uber, every car manufacturer, all are going for self driving cars. Self driving Semis

      • Think of all the paper shufflers personal computers put out to pasture 30 years ago. That had a much bigger impact than the few thousand seasonal warehouse pickers that will be impacted by this. Society will survive.

        Will it? We seem to be having ever worse economic meltdowns, and "recovery" after each is simply a stock market bubble inflating for a while before popping again. Social security has kept outright bread riots from happening so far, but is running out of money, is actively opposed by a lot of pe

    • "Savings" also means "less money for workers to spend in their local economy".

      It also means increased value of the existing workers, and more money available to spend on their salaries. Where do you think all the comfy, high-paying IT jobs come from? You're getting a six-figure salary only because of all the people doing menial tasks have been replaced by the computers you are able to keep up-and-running.

      This may not end well.

      Eventually, maybe not. But right now unemployment is at historical lows. The r

  • 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 [youtube.com]"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Things that are too specialized don't adapt well to a change in what they need to deal with. Vending machines only handle certain ranges of shape, size, etc. The system mentioned should be more flexible, at, as you indicate, the cost of some efficiency.

    • Conveyor is expensive. You're idea would cost multiple orders of magnitude more than the robots.

  • Capitalism's cycle is broken now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Friday June 17, 2016 @04:10PM (#52339567)

    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.

    • Yep, the good old days for income equality peaked 30-60 years ago.
      What we are seeing now is a slow and deliberately controlled downward spiral.

      Wealth transfers in the past 20-30 years are enormous, and are one way, to a very small percentage of people(you know who I'm talking about)

      Do yourself a favor and read some of the stuff Marshall Brain has written about this subject, its pretty interesting. [marshallbrain.com]

    • but there are a group of people who are absolutely incapable of doing anything beyond warehouse work or factory work

      I don't consider it unkind. Some people don't seek more than that. For some of us a job is just a job. For those people life is what happens when you're not at the job. It's why silicon valley's "Everyone should just become an entrepreneur misses the point. a) We can't ALL be job creators and b) we don't all WANT to become job creators.

    • You feed them, or kill them.

      • 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

  • 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

  • In turn, the company's operating costs have been sliced by 20% -- or almost $22 million -- per warehouse.

    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 wit

    • In turn, the company's operating costs have been sliced by 20% -- or almost $22 million -- per warehouse.

      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.

      all those benefits will be pass on to prime people only and the rest of us will have to have larger orders to subsidize them more and more.

      • all those benefits will be pass on to prime people only

        Okay then. Show me the price of Amazon Prime decreasing, which preferably coincides with this increasing automation, then...

  • they work for peanuts people.. peanuts!!!!

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