“You had to process the items in seconds and then move on. “There was no time to go to the loo,” he said, using the British slang for toilet. He described having to process hundreds of items in an hour - a pace so extreme that one day, he said, he fell over from dizziness. Max Crawford, a former Amazon warehouse worker in Britain, said in a phone interview, “After a year working on the floor, I felt like I had become a version of the robots I was working with.” With guidance from a wristband, workers could fill orders faster.Ĭritics say such wristbands raise concerns about privacy and would add a new layer of surveillance to the workplace, and that the use of the devices could result in employees being treated more like robots than human beings.Ĭurrent and former Amazon employees said the company already used similar tracking technology in its warehouses and said they would not be surprised if it put the patents into practice. The aim, Amazon says in the patent, is to streamline “time consuming” tasks, like responding to orders and packaging them for speedy delivery. The patent applications, filed in 2016, were published in September, and Amazon won them this week, according to GeekWire, which reported the patents’ publication on Tuesday. On Monday, the tech industry was jolted by the discovery that Strava, a fitness app that allows users to track their activities and compare their performance with other people running or cycling in the same places, had unwittingly highlighted the locations of United States military bases and the movements of their personnel in Iraq and Syria. Privacy advocates, however, note that a lot can go wrong even with everyday tracking technology. Amazon already has a reputation for a workplace culture that thrives on a hard-hitting management style, and has experimented with how far it can push white-collar workers in order to reach its delivery targets.
By last August, Amazon was estimated to be delivering 66% of its own packages.Īmazon's in-house delivery operations have become a major advantage during this year's holiday shopping season, which has been particularly challenging due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a global supply chain crunch and labor shortages.Amazon, which rarely discloses information on its patents, could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.īut the patent disclosure goes to the heart about a global debate about privacy and security. Bank of America analysts predicted Amazon delivered 58% of its own packages in 2019, making it the fourth-largest delivery service nationwide, according to Digital Commerce 360. Its shipping operations are growing fast. It has also dotted the country with warehouses and air hubs that can speed along packages.Īnalysts and investors have long predicted that those tools would enable Amazon to one day rival major carriers like UPS, FedEx and the U.S. The retail giant now oversees thousands of last-mile delivery companies that deliver packages exclusively for Amazon, as well as a budding in-house network of planes, trucks and ships.
Its goal has been to have greater control over how shoppers' packages get to their doorsteps. Amazon has been steadily building up vast logistics and fulfillment operations since a 2013 holiday fiasco left its packages stranded in the hands of outside carriers.
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