One recent morning, inside a cavernous Amazon.com fulfilment centre outside Seattle, Evan Shobe positioned himself before a bank of nine computer screens.
More than the physical robots, the stars of Amazon’s facilities are the algorithms — sets of computer instructions designed to solve specific problems. Software determines how many items a facility can handle, where each product is supposed to go, how many people are required for the night shift during the holiday rush, and which truck is best positioned to get a stick of deodorant to a customer on time.
“Fulfilment-centre managers were not engaging with associates,” says Kuruvilla, who worked on automation tools designed partly to help foster human interaction. “If that doesn’t happen, it can be a downward spiral for Amazon. This is when unions come in, when you’re not taking care of people.” From there, workers stow items on shelves, standing alongside chain-link fences that separate them from the robots. The shelf is packed tightly inside the robots-only zone until, after an order is placed, a Kiva drives the rack to a picking station where workers pluck the right product, place it in a bin, and send it down the line for packing and shipment.
Engineers have found other ways to make BFI4 faster and more accurate. Workers who stow products on shelves once physically scanned bar codes to figure out where an item should go. Now video cameras automatically identify what workers take from the bins as projected green beams illuminate cubbies where the products might fit.
This month, California’s legislature passed a bill that will give warehouse workers the power to fight so-called speed quotas. Proponents of the legislation, which the governor has not yet signed, say the pace of work pushes employees to skirt safety rules and skip rest breaks. One employee, who joined a Nevada warehouse during Amazon’s pandemic hiring surge, recalls seeing colleagues piling so many items on shelves that they were in danger of collapsing.
People who helped Amazon build its operation bristle at its reputation as a brutal workplace. “It’s not that they’re inhuman and want people to be treated poorly — never in a million years,” says a former Amazonian, who worked on warehouse technology and requested anonymity because she is still in the industry. “It’s just when you’re so narrowly focused on solving a mathematical problem, you forget that human element and you need to be reminded.
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