Robots rule in Amazon fulfillment center

by Gene Beley, CVBT Correspondent

TRACY

January 25, 2015 9:01pm

•  Why the human workers like their robot co-workers

•  “They are pretty impressive little guys”

They work without stopping to kibitz with the next cubicle. They toil without needing a lunch break -- or even coffee. They are robots and they rule at the gigantic distribution centers used by online retailer Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) of Seattle, Wash.

Amazon calls them fulfillment centers and operates two in the Central Valley -- in Tracy and Patterson.

The company held grand openings for the centers the same day this past week and gave quite a workout for those touring the facilities. This article will focus on the one million square foot, three-story center in Tracy that can only be fully appreciated by viewing the video of the press tour. “If you would take all the infrastructure and put it on level ground,” said Sanjay Shah, director of regional operations, “it would cover 59 football fields.”

Why a grand opening now since these two facilities have been operating since 2013?

“We wanted to make sure we completed the expansion of these buildings to their fullest potential,” said Mr. Shah. He said the facilities were completed in 2013. When he spoke at the morning Tracy grand opening event with various dignitaries present, he said it was an eighth generation Amazon fulfillment center. This was a reference to the high tech approach that has thrust them light years ahead of any other distribution center in the world with their Kiva Robots.

Amazon bought the Michigan Kiva Systems mobile robotic fulfillment system company in March 2012 for $775 million. Kiva Robotics was started by Mick Mountz, who formerly owned an online grocery system that failed because of the high cost of order fulfillment and inflexibility of material handling systems.

Although Kiva had acquired some major accounts like Crate & Barrel, which is a neighbor now to Amazon in Tracy, The Gap, Walgreens, Staples, and Saks 5th Avenue, Amazon now seems bent on keeping the technology proprietary and has quit selling the robots.

“There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into developing the software and algorithms (step-by-step set of operations performed),” said Mike Roth, vice president, North American Operations. “We rolled out the Kiva Robots last year in this facility. I’m very excited to share with you what these little robots do for us. They are pretty impressive little guys,” adding, tongue in cheek, “I think they are all guys, but I’m not sure.”

They are stout “little guys” – weighing in at about 320 pounds and able to lift up to 750 pounds.

How do the human associates interact with the robots? “They like it very much because these robots took away the walking,” said Mr. Roth. “We let the associates be very good at what they are doing.”

He said there is a naming competition where the associates have named about 85 of the robots.”

“The robots allow us to be a lot faster for our customer orders,” Mr. Roth stressed. He said Amazon now has 15,000 of them in 10 facilities in North America and will launch them in Europe next year.

There are two models of the orange colored Kiva robots. One is about two feet by two and a half feet by one foot high and is capable of lifting 1,000 pounds. The larger model can carry pallets and loads as heavy as 3,000 pounds and both travel three to four miles per hour. They are battery powered and get recharged every hour for five minutes.

The first impression on entering the interior at Amazon’ Tracy facility is that it looks almost empty of people, despite their 1,500 fulltime “associates.” In peak periods, even more are there, Mr. Roth said. But unlike most distribution center facilities of other companies, humans are not running to fetch items, or using forklifts. The Kiva robots are doing those jobs.

The humans seen scattered throughout the multi-level facility are standing, looking at a computer screen, and performing their tasks while interacting with the robots before the robots again scurry to another destination.

“We get inbound freight from thousands and thousands of vendors and sellers from all over the U.S. to this facility,” said Mr. Roth, the inbound tour guide for the media in Tracy. The freight is received by associates who put the received freight into containers in the yellow totes on the robot carts that take them to stations.

“What we do is very random. You won’t see a DVD next to a DVD or a consumer electronics item next to another consumer electronics item. You will see toys next to keyboards, apparel and all kinds of products mixed together in the storing location,” he said. “We have a very sophisticated inventory management system that knows exactly where an item is in this facility and optimize the whole outbound process by looking at all the available inventory and combination of units for customers orders.

“It’s not directed like in some old school distribution facility,” Mr. Roth continued, “where you have the same item, in the same location every time. This is a very different concept. It is the synchronization of a lot of software development and a lot of infrastructure. Obviously, it relies on very good associates that know how to work in synchronization with all the technology in the facility.”

The next steps

In the receiving areas, an associate puts the merchandise into storage pods. Mr. Roth looked into one associate area’s workspace and said the item being received was beeswax from California.

“When you click ‘buy’ on Amazon, it starts the process,” said Mr. Roth. “We look at where the inventory is available and where it needs to go and what is the most efficient way to get it to the customer. The associate gets an instruction to