Adjacent bins with identical items can confuse the pickers. “The next pod comes, and a pod comes after that, and after that,” Mr. Long told me. Then they're sent to the pack station, where the computer system recommends box sizes to associates, and a machine measures out the exact amount of tape needed. If you are imagining a warehouse filled with handcarts and all the books in one place and apparel in another, picture this: orange robots balancing towers of goods twirling in what looks like a choreographed dance across shiny concrete floors, miles of conveyor belts and ramps carrying inventory across the building, and shipping labels practically flying onto boxes, blown by puffs of air.Even in person, the scale can be difficult to grasp: the Baltimore center, for example, spans the equivalent of 28 football fields and can hold millions of items on any given day. If an item falls down along the way, or a robot stalls, a worker on what’s known as the amnesty team will venture into the cage to sort it out.
He figured out how to reduce wasted movement by unpacking the box closest to the shelving unit first, then replacing it with the next-closest box, rather than wandering to and from other boxes.Still, even Mr. Zhang and his fellow stowers must work with Amazon’s software looking over their shoulder.
For instance, Boston Dynamics—maker of the hypnotically impressive Amazon, on the other hand, can iterate on a robot until it's perfectly adapted for a specific task. But the implications strike at the very nature of modern labor: Humans and robots are fusing into a cohesive workforce, one that promises to harness the unique skills of both parties.
They park off to the side of the field, some of them in charging stations.
Workers can go to one of several areas with tables to follow instructions on how to administer the test. “Within minutes I'm able to shut that chute off, redirect drives to another chute, and I'm done.”The key here is flexibility—not a word that first comes to mind when you think of robots.
Waterman, the packer, previously worked in the frozen-food department of a grocery store. Now when they arrive, they are channeled past thermal cameras, manned by colleagues, to take their temperatures.
At the bottom of the chutes, yet more humans grab the packages and stack them on pallets for delivery. You know this is a trained professional who will probably walk in and out of the cage without incident. Inside, a vast web of conveyor belts crisscrosses the building, moving between areas where workers stow products into robotic shelves and areas where the workers pick items up from the shelves. At a small stand enclosed in plexiglass, a worker stands with a stack of masks, which are handed out using long tongs.After workers pass through the temperature checks, they see a glass-walled room that previously was used for training. “It was a super meaningful way for him to preserve a little bit of decisional autonomy,” she said.Amazon workers, too, have resorted to small acts of rebellion. The New York Times agreed to tour the facility to see the changes that Amazon and many workers around the country had described.The facility, which opened in 2016, stretches across more than one million square feet. The center had recently held a contest for their children to illustrate job safety practices, like bending at the knees and wearing glovesBut underlying Mr. Long’s charge was the idea that Amazon treats workers as if they were something less than people — that its obsession with optimizing fulfillment centers for a world of one-day delivery requires a system of stifling routines, rules and metrics.
The same thing happens if a stower tries to put heavy items too high on the pod, or too much weight on either side.After the pods are full, the robots move them across a large caged area. Much of the building naturally has little human interaction because the work areas are spaced far apart.But some high-traffic areas have changed. One group of workers unloads the goods, and another group — known as “Of the entry-level jobs at Amazon, the stower’s arguably provides the most room for decision making. Only after some experimentation did he find the sweet spot.My trip to Amazon’s Staten Island center had its origins two months earlier. After all, a bump might toss a package to the ground, which other robots would spot with their vision sensors and route around, adding yet another layer of complexity to the field. At the height of its crisis, one Amazon executive said he had quit over the While Amazon has rolled out safety changes, many workers and officials said But in recent weeks, workers said, some conditions inside the warehouses have improved. Illustration: Glenn Harvey. That coordination system also decides when a robot should peel off to the side and dock in a charger, and when it should return to work.
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