Amazon is promoting robots, will jobs be affected?
The sales of the giant retail company Amazon is decreasing. Therefore, the pressure on the company to reduce costs is increasing. Not only Amazon, the sales of other companies are decreasing. In view of the fear of recession, people are engaged in reducing expenses.
There is a period of ups and downs in America, Europe and many big economies and its effect is beginning to be seen on demand and jobs. Companies are engaged in cutting costs
To control the cost, the company is now increasing the use of robots in its operations.
At present, about three quarters of the packets delivered by Amazon have passed through some robotic system.
Amazon Robotics chief Ty Brady told the BBC, “It may be that in the next five years, there will be 100 percent of robotic systems in packaging.”
However, the company declined to say how much such investment helps in reducing costs.
The company’s big bet in robotics How soon will these robots replace human workers? Avoiding such a question, the employees here say that with the advancement of technology, 700 new types of work will be created.
“Works will change, but human needs will always be there,” says Brady.
At an event held at the company’s robotics hub in Massachusetts, near Boston, Brady showed reporters his full set of robots, drones and mapping technology.
The company is testing a giant robotic arm that lifts goods before packing them into boxes.
The executives of the companies have termed it as a big success. Trial is also going on for a machine that can run along with humans on the floor of the warehouse.
Drone delivery by the end of the year Amazon is now thinking of doing delivery by drone. It may start by the end of this year.
Joe Quinlivan, the company’s Vice President of Robotics Fulfillment and IT, says, “I believe that what we are going to do in the next five years will prove to be more than everything we have done in the last ten years. We are going to change our network.”
Even though Amazon is now preparing to work on the big plan of robotics, but it has been slow in taking initiative in this matter.
Chinese e-commerce company JD.com opened a warehouse five years ago with only four human employees.
While American rival Walmart is also delivering goods by drone.
Supply chain companies are investing heavily “Companies in the supply chain are spending a lot of money on these types of investments. Investment in robotics is increasing even with the difficulties of finding employees,” says Dwight Klepich, vice president of research at Gartner’s logistics team.
He said, “Many new experiments are being done in this sector. Similar experiments are being done in other industries as well. All companies, big and small, are doing this.”
Amazon reportedly issued an internal memo last year saying there could be a shortage of people employed at its warehouses in the US by 2024.
Keeping this estimate in mind, the company has been working on a robotics project for the last decade.
Amazon Will Install Robotic Arms in the Next Two Years To start these efforts, it bought a Boston-based company Kiva Systems in 2012. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos talked about the company’s drone delivery plan in a 2013 interview itself.
According to Amazon, it currently has five lakh twenty thousand mobile drive robots that gallop on the floors of its warehouses. This number is double as compared to 2019. In the US and Europe, it has installed 1000 robot arms of the old version to sort packets at its locations.
The robots that Amazon showed to journalists on Thursday are still in trial mode. But in the next two years, they will be deployed on a large scale in the company’s operation.
The company expects that its drones will start delivering 500 million packets by the end of this decade. This will also allow delivery in densely populated areas like Seattle.
But despite this, this is only a very small part of the 5 billion packets delivered by the company.
Robotics budget also cut It is not that the cost-cutting effect on robotics will not be there. The company’s sales have come down and concerns have also increased due to the increase in the fear of economic slowdown.
This year Amazon closed its drone program in the UK. Apart from this, the operation named Scout was also canceled. Under this, work was being done to develop such machines, which could deliver goods to people’s homes.
“We know the economic situation in Britain,” Brady said.
Brady said the hold-off rule would also apply to the robotics division. But he also said that we will not reduce investment.
