Amazon Kiva robots bolster order fulfillment
Effective order fulfillment has always been the cornerstone of successful eCommerce operations. The more orders warehouse workers can pick, pack and ship every day, the greater capacity the seller has for accepting purchases while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction.
Over the years, order fulfillment has gotten much easier to execute, but at the same time, more complex. With more warehouses switching to real-time order fulfillment, merchants are being challenged to keep up with demand.
At the same time, new mobile tools, for example, allow warehouse employees to locate and pick items seamlessly without having to go back to a computer station to log the pick. Additionally, wave picking allows distribution center workers to be more efficient.
Stepping up order fulfillment with robots
Amazon is known as an innovator within the retail space, whether it is the huge marketplace that has become home to many brands or Amazon Prime, which has inspired numerous subscription programs at other retail outlets. Now, the online seller is taking an innovative approach to order fulfillment as well.
In the lead up to the holidays, Amazon announced its eight-generation fulfillment center, which not only featured the latest fulfillment software and hardware, but also a staff of robots that can pick, pack and ship orders much more quickly than their human counterparts. According to Retail Solutions Online, the use of the machines, called Kiva Robots, resulted in roughly a 50 percent boost in terms of how much inventory was moved throughout the distribution center.
The fulfillment centers feature more than 15,000 Kiva Robots, and allow Amazon to do the same job in half the time. Robots can fetch products in roughly 15 minutes, which is significantly faster than human workers.
“The Amazon fulfillment teams are dedicated to innovating in our fulfillment centers to increase speed of delivery while enabling greater local selection at lower costs for our customers,” Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations and customer service, told the news source.
While retailers do not need to install robots in their warehouses (not yet at least), it does show the effort that industry leaders are going through to improve order fulfillment. Utilizing the latest technologies can be a significant boon to eCommerce operations, and can greatly improve order fulfillment operations.