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Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#101

Post by adinobro »

ssvss wrote: post #66
CamelCaseName wrote: post #14

About time! I visited either YYZ4 or YYZ3 a few months ago and I was incredibly disappointed. For a technology company, their warehouses were anything but sophisticated. Their storage robots were surprisingly lackluster, their outbound/cubiscan conveyor belt was incredibly slow and often stopped. Of course, I am just an outsider looking in, and I have no visibility into the underlying software that optimizes these pr…

Any article that you suggest for knowing more about JD's fulfillment tech?

The technology seems similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYjc9h8oSsY (This is actually Alibaba but JD should be the similar)

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#102

Post by mft_ »

sandworm101 wrote: post #35

I'm surprised that Amazon still uses boxes. They have the market power to insist manufacturers comply with amazon-specific packaging requirements. Why not just insist that all products be packaged in postal-compatible packaging? Then the amazon warehouse robot need only slap a label on the product and throw it in the shipping bin. Another answer would be to have products packaged in standard, or at lease square, boxe…

> Or do away with the warehouse altogether and have products ship directly from manufacturers. I wonder if anyone has tried that?

Erm... manufacturers have been shipping their own products for years... but they're not very good at it, compared to Amazon?

As in, they offer standard slow shipping (vs. same-day or next-day with Prime), shipping you have to pay for per item (vs. Prime), shipping that is often unreasonably expensive (vs. Prime) and have other issues resulting in a worse UX e.g. poorer website design, and/or signing up for individual accounts with every website (vs. Prime).

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#103

Post by drewmol »

cheeze wrote: post #9
fastball wrote: post #2

Something tells me people will find a way to complain about this. And that those people will be the same people that think Amazon's warehouse policies are oppressive.

IMO the best "counterargument" here is that those were jobs which paid folks who then paid into their local economy. That goes away with robots and becomes more revenue. Lots of folks are in favor of a "automation tax." I'm not sure how I feel. Note I'm not arguing these points, but merely pointing them out.

Another negative impact of losing those jobs is that those folks paid income tax. When the operational cost of these tasks are transferred from payroll to capital expense the effective federal tax rate of what was payroll is lost (a ballpark 1.7% - 8.7%[0]) and the added automation cost is used as a deduction on a ballpark -1% - 1%[1] corporate income tax.

[0]https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/31/heres-what-the-av...

[1]https://www.vox.com/2019/2/20/18231742/amazon-federal-taxes-...

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#104

Post by nextos »

gregmac wrote: post #85
sandworm101 wrote: post #35

I'm surprised that Amazon still uses boxes. They have the market power to insist manufacturers comply with amazon-specific packaging requirements. Why not just insist that all products be packaged in postal-compatible packaging? Then the amazon warehouse robot need only slap a label on the product and throw it in the shipping bin. Another answer would be to have products packaged in standard, or at lease square, boxe…

They have to strike a balance to optimize between shipping costs, time spent packing, packing material costs, claims due to damage during transit and insurance/theft costs. If items are usually/never ordered by themselves, packing in a larger box might still always work out to be cheaper than paying for shipping for two boxes. There's already enough of a problem with theft of generic 'Amazon'-branded boxes -- can you…

True. In fact, they tend to ship big items in their original retail packaging. E.g. vacuum cleaners. Not good. In my case I got 2 damaged items out of 3 shipments with said boxing.

Now they have included a free option to wrap inside another bigger Amazon box. I guess they got too many damaged items and complaints from customers.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#105

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

oliwarner wrote: post #80
irrational wrote: post #5

This sounds like good news. I've read lots of negative stories about the working conditions in Amazon warehouses. It would be great if all the jobs could be automated.

That's certainly one way of looking at it but I would worry if your answer to "those workers are being abused!" is always "make them redundant via automation". Amazon's warehouse workers were abused because Amazon , not because those jobs should have been automated. They could have had more break time. They could have had lower targets. Pay them more. Paternity leave. So many things you can do to improve working cond…

How does Amazon stack up against other warehousing jobs in those areas?

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#106

Post by cadence- »

Theodores wrote: post #23

So the 'pick' part of 'pick and pack' still needs humans. This machine glues a cardboard box together removing the need for the guy with the tape. The article stresses that this is about efficiency rather than reducing head-count. This is a good thing as that means more optimally packed items being ferried around the country. However, for other online sellers that do not have this semi-automated packing this is not s…

I think it’s safe to assume that this machine will be getting improvements. The “pick” part will surely also get automated at some point. It’s quite obvious to anybody who is willing to think about it for a while, to deduct that these kind of jobs will eventually all get automated. What the various governments should be doing now, is to start preparing the society to a new reality in which no-skill and low-skill jobs are gone. This will happen at some point. What do we do about it? The only thing that is happening so far are various timid Universal Income pilots. But those often hit substantial political pressure and are being labeled as socialist or even communist, and therefore unacceptable. So how do we prepare?

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#108

Post by bamboozled »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #83
Shivetya wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to be honest I am not sure your going to find warehouse work that isn't demanding. they usually all have metrics by which they are judged but we hear very little of other companies simply because Amazon is big and therefor an easy target. be careful what you wish for, automating manual labor jobs just pushes the value of such labor lower which can further put these people behind. as labor costs rise automation will c…

We could also reduce the work week and increase taxes to distribute the gains from automation, instead of relying on the goodwill of billionaires. It seems the current political populism environment is best suited for this outcome.

It's going to be an interesting economic situation when the wealth distribution is so skewed towards less than 1% of the population that no one has any money left to make billionaires, billionaires.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#109

Post by xxs »

asdfman123 wrote: post #62
CodeMage wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's good news, just not for the people you're thinking of. Think about people who work in Amazon warehouses despite those conditions. Why do they do that? Because the alternatives are worse. This just removes these jobs and leaves them to face those alternatives.

I think HN's tune would be quite different if someone came up with a technology that eliminated half of all programming jobs. Not quite so many people would be saying, "This is great! I for one look forward to technological advancement." I do think the future should involve more automation, I just think we should be -- I dunno, a little less gleeful about it and think about the people it's impacting.

"eliminated half of all programming jobs"

Tools to improve speed of development have existed for ages, twice the speed = twice less developers in a blunt way. (that includes even programming languages)

Personally I'd consider it an improvement - if I job can be automated, it should be.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#110

Post by isoskeles »

hrktb wrote: post #49
Tharkun wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe something called 'communism' which addresses that. Snark aside, automating shitty jobs is a Good Thing. Finding new and better jobs for those impacted should be a major political priority. Education is one aspect, but comes too late for those already on the workforce. Places like Japan keep unemployment low by having many low skill jobs, like mall greeters and whatnot. This may be better than unemployment,…

> Places like Japan keep unemployment low by having many low skill jobs, like mall greeters and whatnot. This may be better than unemployment, but is possibly not the best use of human versatilty.. An interesting aspect is that those jobs are low technical skill, but can require good to very good social skills to be done well. Without joking, greeting an elderly entering a bank and guiding them to the section they ne…

That’s not what people mean when referring to low skill jobs.

What you’re saying would be similar to saying a warehouse worker might be low in technical skill but high in strength skill, which just misses the point that people refer to low skill jobs as jobs that require little education or specialization.

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