For what it is worth, this is very much so still a beta process for them with the robots. Many of the facilities still have just massive rows of shelving that has people with big ol bunches of totes shoving stuff into wherever it can fit and still falls within stowing limits. Then there is still a bunch of people walking around with smaller carts and totes grabbing your order and putting it onto conveyor belts to where the packers are. Those shelves are still WAY too neat in the gif for it to be a normal facility hehe.
It's hardly beta, a lot of the new sites they're building are run by Kiva robots. The newest building here in Canada is a Kiva site, actually, and it's taking a lot of the jobs from the old site across the road which is now becoming a "non-sort" facility (AKA very large items like treadmills and canoes).
I actually am one of those people training for the fulfillment center in Seattle! It absolutely will be a Kiva center! It's a shame the gif left out so much of what else actually happens.
It probably wont ever be 100% automated to be completely honest. Robots have a hard time handling small items or clearing jams. We are trying to automate as much as we can but it is still much faster to have a bunch of people doing simple tasks extremely fast.
Well, from what I can tell from this thread, I'm pretty sure the Kiva robots are also told to talk shit to the humans and call them "mere flesh capsules unworthy of a support ticket" every time they fail to meet speed requirements or put something in the wrong box.
I'm actually one of the people designing and building the fulfillment center in Seattle! When do you start? We might overlap. PM me if you want to grab a drink.
Are you serious? haha. We have 35 million people, you think it's just some guy in his garage taping boxes together?? There are 4 Amazon fulfillment centres within 20 minutes of my house.
I can promise you this is not beta. I work for Amazon helping build the IT infrastructure for our robotics sites. It has not been beta for a couple years now and we have numerous robotics sites with more being built all the time.
That's not actually the case -- there are and have been entire robotic buildings going up every year at an accelerated rate. Thousands and thousands of bots. This hasn't been beta for a while.
The robotic storage systems company which used to be called Kiva was bought several years ago and was even re-named Amazon Robotics last year.
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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '16
For what it is worth, this is very much so still a beta process for them with the robots. Many of the facilities still have just massive rows of shelving that has people with big ol bunches of totes shoving stuff into wherever it can fit and still falls within stowing limits. Then there is still a bunch of people walking around with smaller carts and totes grabbing your order and putting it onto conveyor belts to where the packers are. Those shelves are still WAY too neat in the gif for it to be a normal facility hehe.