2023-10-19 13:23:05
Amazon presented new robots for its warehouses and new drones on Wednesday, supposed to allow the online commerce giant to capitalize on its trump card: ultra-fast deliveries.
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Already present in two American cities, in Texas and California, the Prime Air service (drone deliveries in less than an hour) will open in a third site in the United States, as well as in Italy and the United Kingdom, by the end of 2024.
For the time being, this option therefore remains very limited. But it’s worth the gamble, according to Prime Air engineering director Jason Patrao, because “our customers have always wanted more speed.”
AFP
“And I think that with drones, we can deliver in thirty minutes on a large scale,” he added in an interview during Amazon’s annual marketing event.
Even with its new, more efficient drones regardless of weather conditions, Prime Air is far from having solved many problems, such as delivering in dense cities.
AFP
But its portfolio is growing, with the addition of prescription drugs for users of the service in College Station (Texas).
Upstream, in its warehouses, Amazon relies on robots to speed up the preparation and distribution of packages.
The Seattle group has just installed a new robotics system called Sequoia in one of its Texan logistics centers, which includes gantry and mechanical arms, computer vision technologies and a new ergonomic workstation for employees.
AFP
Amazon already uses 750,000 robots in its warehouses, but aims to make the different machines more interoperable.
Time savings
Sequoia helps identify and put away products received in warehouses “up to 75% faster,” the company said in a statement, allowing items to be put on sale more quickly.
And order processing time decreases by 25% in best-case scenarios.
“In-person sales, in physical stores, still represent more than 80% of total retail sales, in particular because the transaction is immediate,” recalls Andrew Lipsman of Insider Intelligence.
The company must increasingly accelerate deliveries, to better compete with physical stores, and thus grow the online sales market, explains the analyst.
AFP
“We have seen it for years, the more e-commerce grows, the more Amazon’s market share grows,” he adds.
Amazon has insisted on the necessary collaboration between robots and humans, while its approach raises questions regarding the risks of job losses.
“Repetitive tasks will undoubtedly go to robots, yes. And they save people from having to carry heavy things or walk miles,” says Scott Dresser, vice president of Amazon’s robotics business.
“But humans are still good at certain tasks that robots will not be able to perform,” he says.
“Over the last ten years, we have installed hundreds of thousands of robotic systems while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs,” particularly related to robot maintenance, Amazon said in a press release.
“Without pause”
The second largest employer in the United States, just behind Walmart, will also test “Digit”, the android robots from Agility Robotics, to carry plastic bins.
AFP
“Currently, there are around a million vacant worker jobs in logistics, according to the federal employment agency,” notes Damion Shelton, co-founder of this start-up.
“So the problem is not taking someone’s job, the problem is that there is no one to do the job,” he continues for AFP.
The Digits move slowly on their “legs” which bend upside down. “But they never stop,” intervenes the boss of Agility.
“They work continuously, without breaks, and ultimately their productivity is similar to that of humans.”
Despite its inescapable appearance, Amazon has been facing a new type of competition this year from Chinese e-commerce applications, such as Temu, which offers various products at discounted prices.
The platform therefore has every interest in continuing its frantic race for ever more optimized deliveries.
AFP
And that’s the crux of the problem for Sheheryar Kaoosji, director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center, a support organization for warehouse workers.
He acknowledges that robots can relieve workers of the most arduous tasks, but believes that Amazon will continue to have “one of the highest workplace injury rates in the country” as long as it imposes worker injury rates. productivity too high.
“Their logic is to use people and then throw them away,” he asserts.
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