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Amazon is Rolling Out Machines To Automate Boxing Up Customer Orders (reuters.com) 108

Amazon is rolling out machines to automate a job held by thousands of its workers: boxing up customer orders. From a report: The company started adding technology to a handful of warehouses in recent years, which scans goods coming down a conveyor belt and envelopes them seconds later in boxes custom-built for each item, two people who worked on the project told Reuters. Amazon has considered installing two machines at dozens more warehouses, removing at least 24 roles at each one, these people said. These facilities typically employ more than 2,000 people. That would amount to more than 1,300 cuts across 55 U.S. fulfillment centers for standard-sized inventory. Amazon would expect to recover the costs in under two years, at $1 million per machine plus operational expenses, they said. The plan, previously unreported, shows how Amazon is pushing to reduce labor and boost profits as automation of the most common warehouse task -- picking up an item -- is still beyond its reach.
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Amazon is Rolling Out Machines To Automate Boxing Up Customer Orders

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    I envision a large machine with all sorts of items entering from the right onto a conveyor at a furious pace, and the machine shitting out a randomly sized box every couple of seconds via a flexible anus with a loud "pup" sound and a little puff of smoke or CO2 vapor onto a slower moving conveyor on the left.
    • Re:In my mind (Score:4, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @09:23AM (#58583314)

      I envision a large machine with all sorts of items entering from the right onto a conveyor at a furious pace, and the machine shitting out a randomly sized box every couple of seconds

      It is not like that at all. If you ever visit an Amazon warehouse, you will be surprised at how human-oriented the process is. They have robots that pick up entire shelves [youtube.com] and move them closer to the picker, but the items are still picked off the shelf by a human.

      TFA describes how they are automating boxing. Really? That wasn't done a decade ago? How hard it it to put some products in a frick'n box and tape it shut?

      • Re:In my mind (Score:4, Interesting)

        by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @09:31AM (#58583364) Journal

        TFA describes how they are automating boxing. Really? That wasn't done a decade ago? How hard it it to put some products in a frick'n box and tape it shut?

        Apparently harder than we think, or it would have already been automated long ago.

      • by lgw ( 121541 )

        TFA describes how they are automating boxing. Really? That wasn't done a decade ago? How hard it it to put some products in a frick'n box and tape it shut?

        Years ago they automated most of it:
        * The automation tells the human what box to use
        * The automation spits out the "fill" (those air sacks) for the difference in volume of the box and the items
        * The automation spits out the right length of tape, and the SPU sticker, and any hazmat stickers.
        * The human just assembles all that.
        * Printing and applying the mailing label (and in some cases closing and taping the box) and dumping it into the right place by zip code is done further down the line, and is fully auto

        • * The automation tells the human what box to use

          It doesn't do a good job. Most boxes I receive are at least twice the size they need to be.

          • by lgw ( 121541 )

            You assume unlimited box choice. In fact, the "right sized" box was used up by that packer 20 minutes ago, and the guy hadn't come by yet to replenish that box size. The guy packing doesn't walk anywhere to get a box, too unoptimized.

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        The items are of different sizes, weights, etc. Then there is the problem of fitting more than a single item into a box to minimize shipping costs. It's not an easy problem to solve.

        After Bezos and his ilk have removed all the lower paid jobs, we'll all have higher paid jobs and able to afford his tat. However, in this dystopian future, people will also have devices to manufacture common stuff at home, and they won't bother buying anything from Amazon. By that time, Bezos will have be living on his cloud se

  • by Jerky McNaughty ( 1391 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @09:19AM (#58583286)

    Some bottled cleaning fluid. I received a padded envelope that wasn't sufficient to hold the weight of the cleaning fluid bottle. By the time it got to me, the item had fallen out of the envelope. The envelope was completely empty, no product and not even an invoice. Just a completely empty envelope. Not really much of a surprise. I'm speculating the robots won't do much of a better job of packaging than the people.

    • My favorites are when they package a heavy, but still somewhat breakable item completely at the bottom and to one side of the box, and fill the rest of the box with packing so that two (possibly three) sides are essentially unprotected. Hint to Amazon - you're supposed to put packing *completely around* the item.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's standard operating procedure at some fulfillment centers. Put the item into the box, fill with dunnage, and then tape it up. Job complete!

      • by lgw ( 121541 )

        That fill is not seen as padding. It's just there to fill the box and keep it from being crushed so easily. Amazon never adds any actual padding to anything they ship - it's just not part of their process. Any padding needed for shipping is supposed to be within the product box, not the shipping box. Sadly, it doesn't always work out that way.

    • The difference is that the robot packer will learn from these failures.

      • by pnutjam ( 523990 )
        You mispelled "do exactly the same thing since it's the optimized route and the programmers don't know anything about real world situations."
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Then you get the opposite extreme, a giant box with masses of space filler and padding, and a ball point pen at the bottom.

      Humans don't have time to do proper packaging, and robots aren't smart enough.

      • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        Then you get the opposite extreme, a giant box with masses of space filler and padding, and a ball point pen at the bottom.

        Humans don't have time to do proper packaging, and robots aren't smart enough.

        Having worked in a warehouse packing boxes, I suspect when stuff like that happens it's more of a "They ran out of smaller boxes at that warehouse" kind of situation. You can either keep the line moving by wasting larger boxes, or shut the place down till the truck shows up. It literally takes 5 time larger to pack a large box than a padded mailer. If a worker continuously chose the unnecessarily large box because of laziness (or malice, or any other excuse beyond "we don't have any small boxes") they wo

    • by pz ( 113803 )

      Amazon (like other retailers) is not interested in making sure your item gets to you in absolutely perfect shape. They are interested in minimizing total cost. If they can save a few pennies per package at the cost of having to re-ship some fraction of packages, well, that's just an optimization problem that has a pretty obvious outcome where they might lose money on an individual sale here and there, but have globally improved profit. They key insight is that they sell things for which there is always a

  • I can't count how many times I've received a giant box full of air for some small item I've ordered.

    Will automation make that better?

    With Prime at least I'm getting "free" shipping. Unlike some eBay items where I might have to pay $20-30 for FedEx for some small item that could be mailed for $4. I try to skip those merchants when I can.
  • They should be seeking to automate the customers, not the warehouses. That's probably cheaper and with higher returns
    • They should be seeking to automate the customers, not the warehouses.

      Have you not heard of Alexa?

      Today: Joke with Alexa, order something explicitly. Ten years in the future: "Hey Alexa, I had a hard day at work and you've still replaced all my human friends" "Ordering you a six pack buddy"

    • They are well on their way to that
      Have you not seen the dash buttons?
      Have you not gotten the "We found something you might like" texts/emails?
      Have you not seen how one can subscribe to get things sent at regular intervals?
  • At last! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @10:18AM (#58583710) Journal

    Finally! We can get rid of all those jobs people have been bitching about. The human condition improves!

    I am ready for my downmod, Mr. DeMille

    • Finally! We can get rid of all those jobs people have been bitching about. The human condition improves!

      I am ready for my downmod, Mr. DeMille

      Well, it's not going to stop happening.

      People aren't going to stop taking the train so that horse grooms can get their jobs back.

      I don't know what the solution is, but "don't do that!" isn't it.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • https://youtu.be/9wmIv1uigUs [youtu.be] First thing that came to mind was the Kerblam episode of Doctor Who. Hehehe.
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @10:50AM (#58583950)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Monday May 13, 2019 @11:18AM (#58584134)
    All the work is done BY HAND by people people looking at address codes and scanning with handheld barcode scanners (they can't even color code or sha;e code the address codes; they are all printed in monochrome text. Here's the fun part: they have metal slides for the packages to slide down to the conveyor belts. Ferrous metal slides. Amazon ships a lot of speakers with huge electromagnets on them... which of course get stuck to the side of the slides, so they have these long poles used to clear the slides! I could never figure out why they didn't use robots, but apparently hiring people without skills for $12/hour sorting jobs helps with their diversity statistics.
  • Automation is nothing new. It's been around for a very long time. The *only* reason that more jobs aren't automated is cost. Quite frankly, it costs less to employ a person to do job "A" then it costs to research and develop automation tools/techniques/strategies, purchase and install them, and hire/train workers to support the equipment. When that paradigm shifts, and the workers are now more expensive the the machinery (and the possible loss of business from the negative press of automating positions)
    • Odd, I go to In and Out (simple burger place in southern california) and they pretty nail my order every time. I even ask them to not include certain toppings and they never screw up.

      In fact, most the time when I go to fast food, they do in fact get my order correct. Very few times can I actually recall them screwing it up. You must live in a worse place then I do and I really thought California took the cake for "state filled with dumb people". Just look at our politicians and there nutter ideas.

      • by egyas ( 1364223 )
        Oh no, you don't have a monopoly on stupid people or politicians (although Cali seems to have quite a few!). I live in the Democratik People's Republik of Illinois, and we have nothing but stupid politicians. Of BOTH parties! Where I live, the people here at fast food places will often roll their eyes if you ask them for something "special" (like "hold the ketchup"). Only places that have yet to mess up my food are Chick-Fill;et and Subway. lol They are some LAZY, entitled-feeling, slackers that don't

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