Amazon Deploys Robots To Boost Holiday Distribution At Tracy Facility
TRACY (CBS SF/AP) – Today marks "Cyber Monday" which traditionally is Amazon. com's biggest day of online shopping and this year the company has implemented robots to make distributions run more efficiently.
Amazon customers will order nearly 37 million items worldwide Monday, which is a record-breaking 426 items per second, company officials said.
Last year, Amazon.com workers hiked miles of aisles each shift to "pick" each item a customer ordered and prepare it for shipping, but now the e-commerce giant boasts that it has boosted efficiency and given workers' legs a break by deploying more than 15,000 wheeled robots to crisscross the floors of its biggest warehouses and deliver products to employees.
Rejinaldo Rosales, who works at the distribution center in Tracy, said he can pack faster now.
"We pick two to three times faster than we used to," Rosales said during a short break from sorting merchandise into bins at Amazon's massive distribution center in Tracy, California, about 60 miles east of San Francisco. "It's made the job a lot easier."
Amazon.com Inc., which faces its single biggest day of online shopping on Monday, has invested heavily this year in upgrading and expanding its distribution network, adding new technology, opening more shipping centers and hiring 80,000 seasonal workers to meet the coming onslaught of holiday orders.
"The little orange robot goes out and picks the right pod of inventory and brings it back at just the right time for the person to pick that item out to go out in that customer's shipment," Amazon's David Clark told KPIX 5.
The robots weigh about 320-pounds, and can lift over 750-pounds at a speed up to four miles per-hour. Amazon says the robots have helped them improve efficiency 20-percent in the warehouse.
The Seattle-based company now has 109 shipping centers around the globe. The Tracy facility is one of 10 in which Amazon has deployed the robots, using technology acquired when the company bought robot-maker Kiva Systems Inc. in 2012, said Dave Clark, Amazon's senior vice president for operations, who gave reporters a tour on Sunday.
More than 1,500 full-time employees work at the Tracy center, which has 1.2 million square feet of space — the equivalent of 28 football fields. They are joined by about 3,000 robots, gliding swiftly and quietly around the warehouse. The robots navigate by scanning coded stickers on the floor , following digital commands that are beamed wirelessly from a central computer.
Amazon says the robots aren't going to replace employees.
"Our focus on automation is about helping people do their jobs, not replacing people," Clark said.
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