Now much did you spend with Amazon (AMZN) this Cyber-Monday? Here is how they process all of those orders. CNet says, customers ordered more than 36.8 million items globally or 426 items per second from the online giant. They use robots like these…
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The 10 Amazon fulfillment centers in California, Texas, New Jersey, Washington, and Florida use:
- More than 15,000 Kiva robots.
- Robo-Stow, one of the largest robotic arms on Earth for moving large quantities of inventory for customer order fulfillment.
- New vision systems for enabling the unloading and receipt of an entire trailer of inventory in as little as 30 minutes instead of hours.
- High-end graphically oriented computer systems for employees to use while fulfilling orders for customers.
USA Today reports the Kiva robots are about a foot tall and weigh about 350 pounds and can lift 700 pounds. They can travel at 5 mph. The Kiva software determines which items each human packer needs and in what order and sends instructions to the robots.
The Kiva-bots follow bar-coded stickers on the floor, to bring a line of shelving units to the human packers, stopping just long enough for the correct item to be plucked from the shelf. Then the Kiva robot carries the whole unit back to its place and goes to get another one.
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Despite the robotic army, AMZN says they plan to hire 80,000 seasonal employees this year, a 14 percent increase from last year. They also claim to retain thousands of those new employees in regular, full-time roles after Christmas. We will see about the jobs.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.