warehouses – Page 2 – The OM Blog by Heizer, Render, & Munson

OM in the News: Are Ruthless Quotas at Amazon Maiming Employees?

Amazon’s famous speed and technological innovation have driven the company’s massive global expansion and a valuation over $800 billion, writes The Atlantic (Nov. 25, 2019). It’s also helped make Amazon the nation’s second-largest private employer. But now the Center for Investigative Reporting has found that the company’s obsession with speed has turned its warehouses into injury mills, finding the rate of serious injuries for Amazon facilities more than double the national industry average: 9.6 serious injuries per 100 full-time workers in 2018, compared with an industry average of 4. Some centers, such as the Eastvale, California warehouse, were especially dangerous, with 422 injuries–more than 4 times the industry average.

The former head of OSHA states: “According to Amazon’s own records, the risk of work injuries at fulfillment centers is alarmingly, unacceptably high. Amazon needs to take a hard look at the facilities where so many workers are being hurt and either redesign the work processes, replace the top managers, or both.”

Many workers spoke with outrage about having been cast aside as damaged goods or sent back to jobs that injured them further. The company does instruct workers on the safe way to move their bodies and handle equipment. But former workers said they had to break the safety rules to keep up. They would jump or stretch to reach a top rack instead of using a stepladder. They would twist and bend over to grab boxes instead of taking time to squat and lift with their legs. They had to, they said, or they would lose their jobs. So they took the risk.

The root of Amazon’s success appears to be the root of its injury problem: the blistering pace of delivering packages to its customers. And during Amazon’s busiest (“peak”) season, employees face the exhaustion of mandatory 12-hour shifts where expectations are precise. Workers have to pick 385 small items or 350 medium items each hour and are expected to meet 100% of this productivity performance standard. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, meanwhile, is focused on customers. “We are ramping up to make our 25th holiday season the best ever—with millions of products available for free 1-day delivery,” he said.

Classroom discussion questions:

What are the ergonomic issues discussed in this article (which we encourage you to read in full)?
What is the solution?

OM in the News: The Rise of the “Cobot”

The holiday hiring frenzy is under way and robots are joining the rush to seasonal jobs, reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 29, 2019). Retailers and logistics operators facing a tight labor market are ramping up automation at warehouses for the holidays, when online order volumes can surge tenfold as consumers load up digital shopping carts in the weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas. To cope, some businesse are ordering up extra fleets of collaborative robots, or “cobots,” that use cameras, lasers and sensors to navigate warehouse aisles and lead workers to the right shelves or to shuttle bins full of products between workstations.

France-based Geodis SA is boosting its robotic workforce by 75% to help workers at its U.S. warehouses fulfill fast-fashion orders during the holiday peak. This year the company, which plans to bring on between 6,000 and 7,000 human workers for the holiday period, is placing a total of 281 robot units at 5 locations. XPO Logistics, which is hiring 20,000 humans for the seasonal rush, is advancing its purchase of millions of dollars’ worth of robots the company expects to need next year so it can use them now to manage the spike in e-commerce orders. Locus Robotics said demand for “surge robots” to bolster the armies of seasonal warehouse workers has grown this year, and the company is sending more than 500 of them to its logistics and e-commerce customers.

Although most warehouses still rely largely on people pulling carts or driving forklifts, scarcity of labor and the push for faster delivery are accelerating automation at warehouses. By 2025 about 28% of warehouses globally will deploy commercial robots, compared to around 3% in 2018. The companies are looking for help in the labor-intensive business of storing, sorting and packing goods for shipment, especially around the holidays, when retailers and logistics providers add tens of thousands of extra workers.

Classroom discussion questions:

In what ways can cobots help the logistics industry?
What exactly is a collaborative robot?

OM in the News: Using Robots to Bring Efficiency to Small Warehouses

An Amazon fulfillment center in New Jersey. Attabotics’s automation is aimed at helping e-commerce retailers to use space more efficiently.

Canada’s Attabotics is part of a growing field of automation technology providers that are devising new ways to store and handle goods as e-commerce reshapes traditional distribution networks. Amazon and other businesses looking to speed up delivery are opening more warehouses near major population centers. Those facilities are often smaller than the sprawling sites that process online orders near logistics hubs in Pennsylvania, Texas and Southern California, putting pressure on operators to make them more efficient.

The trend has driven greater interest in “micro-fulfillment” centers, which use robotics and automation to pack more goods into small spaces to help deliver orders more quickly to customers, writes The Wall Street Journal (July 30, 2019). Attabotics’s technology uses robotic shuttles to retrieve goods stored in vertical structures. The shuttles move horizontally across a grid at the top, then navigate vertically down shafts with storage on four sides, pulling product bins that they deliver to workers at stations set around the perimeter of the structure.

The system can pick, pack and ship using 20% of the labor and 15% of the space of traditional fulfillment operations. The company has customers in North America in sectors including luxury retail and wholesale food distribution. Attabotics’s technology could also be placed in the back of retail stores to help bricks-and-mortar merchants fulfill online orders more quickly.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why is there a need for Attabotics’s product?
How does this system differ from the Kiva robots used extensively at Amazon?

OM in the News: “Alexa, Manage My Warehouse”

As e-commerce order volume continues spiraling upwards while delivery windows shrink, warehouse workers need innovations to meet picking, packing and shipping goals, writes Supply Chain Dive (April 30, 2019). Speech recognition software and voice-directed applications have been used in warehouses since the late 1990s. Even with continued technological advancements, though, adoption is still relatively low. About a quarter of warehouses use voice-directed picking. Traditional voice-directed technologies with headsets and microphones are one solution. New uses of current voice technologies, like Alexa, are another.

Millennial workers are tech-savvy and like incorporating technology in their jobs. They’re used to smart speakers with consumer applications like Google Home and Amazon’s Echo and Alexa, and the voice systems have similarities. Efficiency is important because individual customers and businesses expect their products to arrive more quickly than in the past. And there’s an increased number of small orders. Instead of a business receiving cases of product on a full or mixed pallet once a week, they’re getting multiple orders per week with individual products.

Those moving to voice-directed technology are often changing from hand-held radio frequency scanning devices. In doing so, they decrease the picking steps in the workflow from 9 steps to around 5 per pick. With spoken commands, there’s no need to hold a device, which must be put down during the picks. Workers no longer need to look at the device screen and use the keyboard to input or find information. The picks are more accurate because the voice system confirms the picker is at the right location and picked the right items. It increases productivity by 30-45%.

Classroom discussion questions:

What are the advantages of voice systems in warehouse “picking”?
What other advances have we seen in huge warehouses such as those of Amazon?

OM in the News: Will Robots Will Soon Rule the Warehouse?

Tracking the progress of the today’s orders at Southern Glazer’s.

Right in the center of Florida, in the city of Lakeland, lay some of the most technologically sophisticated distribution centers in the country, writes The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 9-10, 2019). You’ll find operations from Amazon, DHL (for Ikea), Walmart , Rooms to Go, Medline and Publix, along with a huge Geico call center, the world’s largest liquor distribution warehouse, and numerous local factories.

Some experts are arguing that the economic good times for Lakeland could rapidly come to an end. Brookings Institution placed it third on its list of metros that are most at risk of losing jobs because of the very same automation and A.I. that make its factories, warehouses and offices so productive.

To understand what’s going on in Lakeland, we look at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, the world’s biggest alcoholic-beverage distributor, and its highly automated 1.3-million-square-foot facility which ships out 85,000-90,000 cases/day. Like many other distributors in the area, Southern Glazer’s chose Lakeland because land is cheap, highways are readily accessible and wages are low. The facility employs 368 warehouse workers. As in automated warehouses the world over, humans do only the jobs that machines can’t—either knowledge work like managing the overall system or physical tasks that require a combination of delicacy, speed and visual acuity. All of the heavy lifting—from placing 2,500-pound pallets into 5-story shelving systems to conveying individual crates throughout the warehouse—is done by machines.

In many ways, the Lakeland warehouse represents a triumph of engineering. Ten years ago, Southern Glazer’s operated 5 warehouses in Florida. It consolidated them all into one thanks to automation–which meant layoffs of almost 20% of the workforce. With automation, though, workers use their brains more, managing the flow of goods through systems and adapting them as consumer demand changes. This has led to much lower turnover. Over the long run, there’s no evidence that automation reduces the number of jobs. Indeed, countries that automate the fastest appear to also grow their economies the fastest.

Classroom discussion questions:

Will we soon see a “light’s out” warehouse?
What functions are hard to automate at a distribution center?

OM in the News: How AI Powers Amazon’s 1-Hour Deliveries

Amazon boxes are scanned on conveyor belts. AI systems keep track of all items in the warehouses, which can be as vast as 1 million square feet.

By the time someone clicks “buy” on Amazon, its Supply Chain Optimization Technologies team has probably expected it. The team forecasts demand for everything sold by Amazon worldwide and underlies the entire Amazon retail operation. Launching their fastest service, Prime Now, Amazon now delivers household basics within hours, thanks to artificial intelligence.

With AI, computers analyze reams of data, making decisions and performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. AI is key to Amazon’s retail forecasting, writes Supply & Demand Chain Executive (Nov. 28, 2018). It is also a key to how Amazon speeds up deliveries: The team predicts exactly where items should be stocked so that they are as close as possible to the people who will buy them, an essential process with the race for same-day and even same-hour delivery. Few other retailers have ventured into these speeds, because they’re very expensive. AI is woven through every part of an Amazon purchase, from the website to the warehouses to the actual delivery. The firm calls it the “first mile,” “middle mile” and “last mile.”

In 2013, Amazon got a patent for “anticipatory shipping.” The idea was to get an order as close as possible to the customer’s address before the customer actually click “buy.” Since then, Amazon has built a massive warehousing footprint around the country, with smaller warehouses closer to city centers where Prime Now promotes super-fast delivery.

Amazon is also now rolling out new efficiency-boosting technology that eliminates the need for the handheld scanners we show in the Chapter 12 Global Profile. The new system retrofits workers’ stations with advanced cameras that can automatically scan items that workers hold in their hands. This kind of innovation is a controversial, where retail store layoffs are rampant, just as automation is reshaping the workforce.

Classroom discussion questions:

What are the operations issues discussed in this article?
How is AI used at Amazon?

OM in the News: How Robots Will Change Retail Forever

This Amazon distribution center in Baltimore can fulfill a million orders in a day. It may not need humans for long.

What if your company could store and deliver goods as easily as data? Amazon, Walmart and others are using AI and robotics to transform everything from appliance shopping to grocery delivery. “Welcome to the physical cloud,” writes The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 15, 2018).

Take, as an example, Amazon’s one-million-square-foot distribution center in Baltimore. Its scaffolding and seemingly endless conveyor belts disappear at a vanishing point within the building. The machine is a dazzling combination of chutes, ladders, rollers and 11 miles’ worth of conveyor belts. Customers’ orders move from shelving into bins and from bins into boxes as they travel via the machine straight into delivery vans, passing by stationary workers at various points along the way. Humans are rarely required to move around here. It’s much faster, and cheaper, to have stuff brought to them.

This is where robots come in. Kiva robots can carry up to 750 pounds of goods in their 40-odd cubbies. After a customer places an order, a robot carrying the desired item scoots over to a worker, who reads on a screen what item to pick and what cubby it’s located in, scans a bar code and places the item in a bright-yellow bin that travels by conveyor belt to a packing station. AI suggests an appropriate box size; a worker places the item in the box, which a robot tapes shut and, after applying a shipping label, sends on its way. Humans are needed mostly for grasping and placing, tasks that robots haven’t mastered yet.

Amazon’s robots signal a sea change in how the things we buy will be aggregated, stored and delivered. The company requires 1 minute of human labor to get a package onto a truck, but that number is headed to zero. Autonomous warehouses will merge with autonomous manufacturing and delivery to form a fully automated supply chain.

Classroom discussion questions:

How does this latest Amazon facility differ from the one we describe in the Global Company Profile that opens Chapter 12?
How is AI being used in this warehouse?

OM in the News: From Reindeer to Robots, Automation Set to Deliver This Holiday

Warehouse robots created by GreyOrange resemble shelf-moving systems developed by Kiva Systems, now part of Amazon, but add AI to the technology

Never mind the reindeer and elves. This year, robots are helping deliver the holidays. Gap is using automated arms and AI to sort the retailer’s clothing orders. Walmart is testing robots that roam store aisles to check inventory and tell workers where to find goods. And logistics providers are sending mobile step-stools mounted with shelves through fulfillment centers to help pull online orders.

With the busy holiday peak looming, retailers and logistics companies are ramping up automation as surging demand for labor outstrips the number of available workers, reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 4, 2018). Much of the technology is being used in distribution operations, where workers are increasingly working alongside machines built to keep goods moving at a rapid pace. The use of robotics and other automation technology in industrial operations is growing, although the vast majority of warehouse work remains largely manual. About 16% of organizations across several industries including warehousing are now using commercial service robots, and 21% have them in pilot programs. Online fulfillment centers—where companies like Amazon pick, pack and ship consumer orders—require 2-3 times as many workers as traditional warehouses.

XPO said this week it is deploying 5,000 autonomous mobile units from GreyOrange at logistics sites across North America and Europe. The robots, which resemble Roomba autonomous vacuum cleaners, sync up with XPO’s warehouse-management software to help workers fulfill up to 48 orders at a time. The robots more than doubled the speed at which orders are processed and help the company keep better tabs on inventory. Logistics-industry interest in robotics is spreading as the technology gets cheaper and easier to adopt. Collaborative robots for example, can work safely alongside humans and be added quickly to existing sites without disrupting operations.

Classroom discussion questions:

How are robots being used in retailers and warehouses?
Why will robots not replace most warehouse workers?

OM in the News: Zara’s New Inventory and Logistics Plan

The ship-from-store operation inside a Zara store in Spain.

Fast-fashion giant Zara is equipping its stores to also ship online purchases, betting that the move will boost sales of full-priced items that can be delivered to customers more quickly than from a warehouse. The rollout encompasses around 2,000 stores in 48 countries, including the U.S., making it one of the largest-scale attempts by an apparel company to repurpose downtown shops to help fulfill online orders.

Zara’s efforts are part of a broader push among retailers to rethink how they can better use their network of brick-and-mortar stores to compete with Amazon, whose dominance in the retail industry has depressed profits and set new standards for speed of delivery. While some have considered traditional retailers’ vast store networks costly and antiquated, industry executives are increasingly equipping them to fulfill online orders to quicken delivery times, cut delivery costs and lift sales. “There has been a trend lately to think of a store as a liability,” an industry expert said. “It’s an asset—but you need to learn to use it correctly.”

Traditionally, retailers shipped items from warehouses to downtown locations, writes The Wall Street Journal (Aug. 1, 2018). (But warehouses on the outskirts of cities are not as close to consumers as stores are). As online shopping grew, many retailers created inventory lines specifically for internet orders. Retail companies including Zara have been working to merge their inventory for online and in-store purchases rather than keeping separate stocks, to minimize lost and discounted sales. Ship-from-store initiatives are one pillar of efforts by Zara and others to tackle the far bigger problem of mismanaged inventory, which, by one estimate, cost retailers nearly $1.4 trillion in lost sales in 2017. While shipping online orders from downtown stores can lower delivery costs, some retailers have struggled to make it profitable because they lack the technology to track in-store and in-warehouse inventory accurately.

Classroom discussion questions:

How are brick and mortar retail stores an asset?
Describe the inventory problems that firms like Zara are facing.

OM in the News: Is UPS Stuck in the 20th Century?

Hundreds of workers just streamed in for the shift at UPS’s Mesquite, Texas local package-sorting facility, one of dozens nationwide that help it move millions of parcels daily, writes The Wall Street Journal (June 19, 2018). A 30-year-old analog control panel about the size of a chest freezer monitors operations, with rows of green and red lights indicating when something goes awry in the building’s web of conveyor belts. “Thirty years ago, this was top-notch,” UPS plant manager said of the control panel. “Today, the computing capabilities can probably fit on your phone, and not even a good phone.”

Workers sort packages the old way at UPS’s Mesquite facility, left, while machines do the job in at its Fort Worth site (right photo).

The site, and other similar UPS facilities, haven’t automated much over decades—despite a rush of new warehouse technology in many industries. Today, the company is paying a price. As UPS tries to satisfy America’s 21st-century shopping-and-shipping mania, parts of its network are stuck in the 20th century. The company still relies on some outdated equipment and manual processes of the type rival FedEx discarded or that newer entrants, including Amazon, never had. UPS says about half its packages are processed through automated facilities today. At FedEx, 96% of ground packages move through automated sites.

Now, the century-old delivery giant is playing catch-up. As part of that effort it plans capital spending of more than $20 billion over the next 3 years. Much of that will go toward opening new automated facilities and technology upgrades to route packages around bottlenecks.

A medium-size package at Mesquite gets four “touches” (acts of handling.) Each touch adds a chance for a sorting error or damage. With 40,000 pieces processed an hour, even rare human misfires can add up. Mis-sorted packages can add an extra day to a delivery. All FedEx ground hubs are automated. FedEx workers touch most packages twice—for the unload and the load. Amazon’s operations, too, bristle with automation. It has been years ahead of many logistics firms in warehouse automation, from driverless forklifts to robots that bring shelves to workers.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why must UPS automate?
What advantages does Amazon have in this field?

OM in the News: Target Tests Retail ‘Flow Center’ for Faster, Nimbler Distribution

The company hopes to send shipments to stores more frequently and in smaller lots tailored more precisely to demand rather than shipping big cases of products.

“Target is testing a new distribution strategy aimed at speeding up its restocking and making the retailer more nimble as it competes with rivals like Amazon and Walmart”, reports The Wall Street Journal (May 15, 2018). The aim is to pare Target’s replenishment cycle from days to hours and reduce inventory at stores. The approach, now in pilot mode at a warehouse in N.J., also uses the same pool of inventory to replenish stores and fulfill online orders, a departure from Target’s existing supply chain.

Under the operation, through a “flow center,” the company sends shipments to stores more frequently and in smaller lots tailored more precisely to demand rather than shipping big cases of products. That could mean shipping “five bottles of shampoo, a case of ketchup, two polo shirts on hangers and a pallet of water, all prepared to move out directly to the sales floor,” said the Supply Chain VP.

Target is also creating a new warehouse management system intended to better integrate its distribution and fulfillment operations, which now use separate systems. The logistics effort comes as Target is investing $7 billion in improvements as it adjusts to the changing consumer shopping patterns that have buffeted the retail world. The explosive growth of e-commerce has put a premium on rapid delivery to online buyers and pressured traditional retailers to make better use of their “big box”real estate.

Target has been expanding its use of stores to fulfill online orders, and nearly 70% of its online volume is handled by stores. With less inventory held at stores, “we can dedicate more room to digital fulfillment. Shipping more orders from our stores reduces our costs, while allowing us to move faster,” said the COO. Stores supported by the flow center have reduced back-room inventories “to a fraction of the norm.”

Classroom discussion questions:

Describe Target’s existing and new distribution strategies.
What is a “flow center?”

OM in the News: How Big is the Role of Robots in Shipping?

Humans and robots work side by side in a FedEx distribution center. The green “tugger” robots pulls heavy goods.

In 2012, Amazon acquired the robotics company Kiva. Since then, it has moved more than 100,000 Kiva robots into its network of 210 fulfillment and package-sorting centers. Now, writes The New York Times (March 19, 2018), many Amazon competitors are moving in the same direction, including shipping and logistics operations like FedEx and DHL. But what is happening at all 3 firms may be a surprise to people who fear that they are about to be replaced by a smart machine: a robot might take your role, but not necessarily your job.

Yes, the robots replace a few jobs right away (typically taking 25 jobs in a facility that employs 1,300 people). But warehouses create lots of new jobs every year — and a heavily robot work force still seems like the distant future. Inside Amazon the need for human labor is growing much faster than the robot work force. Since deploying its first robots, Amazon has expanded its work force by 300,000 people.

A control center inside a FedEx distribution hub

As people have become more comfortable buying online, big and bulky goods like car tires, canoes and boxes as big as a coffin have accounted for an increasing percentage of the packages flowing through distribution centers. These ungainly items can’t fit on a conveyor belt.

McKinsey recently predicted that about 1/3 of workers in the U.S. will have to switch occupations because of technology-driven automation by 2030. “What people underestimate is the time needed for this to happen,” said a McKinsey partner.

Classroom discussion questions:

Why can’t distribution centers be fully automated?
What roles can robots play in distribution hubs?

OM in the News: Warehousing Adapts to the E-Commerce Boom

Prologis, the largest provider of logistics real estate in the U.S., is building the first multi-story warehouse in the U.S. in Seattle

The e-commerce boom is reshaping the entire supply chain, creating both demand for warehouse space and changing the way businesses store goods, reports Supply & Demand Chain Executive (March 13, 2018). In the past, warehouses have generally been on the outskirts of cities, isolated from high population density, partially so that goods could be moved without hindrance. But now warehouse space is at a premium, especially closer to population centers to facilitate next-, or even same-day shipments. “In the previous model you didn’t need to move things all that quickly,” said one industry expert. “In this compressed dynamic, you’ve got to push into cities and places where people live.”

Warehouse design also is changing. The average new warehouse built in the U.S. from 2012- 2017 is 143% larger and 3.7 feet higher than the last construction peak. Multi-story warehouses, popular in Asia and Europe, have joined the U.S. warehouse landscape to maximize space. Mega-warehouse markets have also just gotten bigger.

There has also been an increase in facilities called inland ports that are used to get freight closer to population-dense areas faster and cheaper. Inland ports are inland intermodal rail terminals that allow for less-expensive over-land rail transit from seaports before a container moves to a truck. Storage rates inland are also cheaper.

Some warehouses are physically changing as well. Fulfillment operations take up more space than traditional pallet and bulk storage and often require new equipment like conveyor belts and sorting or packaging machinery. It also requires additional labor resources working throughout the day to pick, pack and ship orders.

Classroom discussion questions:
1. Why is there interest in multi-story warehouses now?

2. Why have they been popular in Europe?

OM in the News: Robots as Job Saviors?

When the robots came to online retailer Boxed, dread came too: The fear that the machines would take over, leaving a trail of unemployed humans. Yet this did not come to pass. When the new warehouse opened this spring, workers found that their jobs were less physically demanding than at the previous, manual warehouse in Edison, NJ. And rather than cutting jobs, the company added a 3rd shift to keep up with rapidly growing demand.

“What happened at Boxed – and elsewhere – suggests that widespread fears about automation and job loss are often misplaced,” reports The Orlando Sentinel (Oct. 31, 2017, page A9). Automation has actually helped create jobs in e-commerce, rather than eliminate them. By accelerating delivery times, robotics and software have made online shopping an increasingly viable alternative to bricks-and-mortar stores, and sales have ballooned at online retailers.

The surge in e-commerce has required the rapid build-out of a vast network of warehouses and delivery systems that include both robots and human workers. Even if the robots replace some people in each warehouse, the proliferation of new warehouses should still generate hiring for years to come. Jobs have been lost at storefront retailers, which have suffered under the e-commerce onslaught.

But worries about a “retail apocalypse” wiping out many of the nation’s 16 million retail jobs have missed a more important trend: E-commerce leads to more jobs, by paying people to do things we used to do ourselves. Amazon accounts for much of the additional employment. Yet it’s also at the vanguard of automation. Since 2014, Amazon has deployed 100,000 robots in 25 warehouses worldwide. It’s tripled its hourly workforce, from 45,000 to 125,000. At Amazon’s Baltimore warehouse, employees called “stowers” are needed to stock the shelves that are carried by robots. And that requires human judgment: Software suggests to workers where each item should be placed. But it’s an employee’s responsibility to make sure the shelves, which are tall and narrow, remain balanced.

The explosion of online commerce is also building demand for higher-paying jobs in software and robotics, with 14% of software job listings are now posted by retailers.

Classroom discussion questions:
1. Why can’t warehouse such as these be totally automated?

2. What is the future of storefront retailers?

Video Tip: Robots at Alibaba, China’s Largest Online Retailer

Occupying .7 acres, Alibaba’s warehouse is situated in China’s Guangdong Province

Online retailer Alibaba has opened the largest ‘smart warehouse’ in China manned by 60 cutting-edge robots. These Wifi-equipped, self-charging machines are responsible for moving goods in the warehouse. They send the goods to human workers, who then arrange the products to be packed and posted to customers around the world.

The automated robots, similar to Amazon’s Kiva machines, started working at the warehouse in July, and have helped increase its output by threefold. Each of the machines is fitted with laser detection which prevents them from bumping into each other. Once fully charged, the robot can work 8 hours non-stop, travelling up to 5 feet per second and carry a load as heavy as 1,322 pounds.

Traditionally, a worker could sort 1,500 products during a 7.5-hour shift after taking 27,924 steps; with the help of the robots, the same worker could sort 3,000 products during the same period of time and only 2,563 steps need to be taken. The machines also lift and rotate the shelves, which makes it easier for human workers to reach the goods.

This entertaining 2 minute video can be shown when you are covering robotics in Chapter 7 or warehousing in Chapter 9.