Amazon has been on a multi-billion dollar and decade-plus long crusade to be a leader in robotics and drive workplace efficiency. The company has two robotics facilities in the Greater Boston Area that have become Amazon Robotics. Will Amazon’s big investment in robotics pay off and what does this mean for the future of its workers?
Fortune explores how Amazon engineers are looking to robotics to revolutionize its shipping business.
Offices are a place many employees spend countless hours, and are often core to the DNA of a company. This Fortune series goes inside some of the most innovative and coveted offices of the Fortune 500 and beyond, as the future of work is continually reshaped.
Fortune explores how Amazon engineers are looking to robotics to revolutionize its shipping business.
Offices are a place many employees spend countless hours, and are often core to the DNA of a company. This Fortune series goes inside some of the most innovative and coveted offices of the Fortune 500 and beyond, as the future of work is continually reshaped.
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00:00This robot snuck up beside me.
00:03Uh-oh.
00:04This is one of the primary sites
00:06where Amazon designs, tests, and builds its fleet
00:09of more than 750,000 robots.
00:12We wanted to have this visual of the engineers
00:15being able to look out the windows and say,
00:16I can see my product, I built it, I designed it here,
00:19I can go downstairs, I'm in with the test engineers.
00:22And it sounds sort of like R2-D2.
00:25The decade-plus, multi-billion-dollar investment
00:27into robotics is key to Amazon's efficiency goals,
00:30especially as the delivery behemoth
00:32faces accusations about workers' safety
00:35in its fulfillment centers.
00:36Before we start talking about productivity and efficiency,
00:39we start with safety.
00:40As we think about the opportunity
00:42within the fulfillment centers to innovate and improve,
00:45we tend to look at the most challenging tasks,
00:47lifting, manipulating, moving things.
00:50So will Amazon's big robotics bet pay off?
00:53As humans work side-by-side with robots,
00:55what will this mean for Amazon's workers
00:58and the future of its shipping business?
01:07We are about an hour outside of Boston
01:09at Amazon's Robotics Hub.
01:11This is a relatively new facility
01:12they bought a few years ago.
01:14We're here to look at Amazon's unique approach to robotics,
01:17which is to have the entire lifecycle of the project
01:20and of the products under one roof,
01:22from development to testing to manufacturing.
01:25So Joe, we're about an hour outside of Boston.
01:27What's the history of this facility?
01:29We opened this facility about three years ago.
01:31And you can see on this road,
01:32there's a number of Amazon facilities.
01:34Our mother site was the original site,
01:36which is the BOSS 12 up in North Reading.
01:38And we'd grown quite a bit
01:39and we wanted to open another development site.
01:41And so we landed in Westboro, Massachusetts.
01:43The talent in here is rich
01:44from previous generations of technology
01:46that had been up and down the corridor here.
01:48We built this about three years ago.
01:50You know, when we opened it,
01:51we were a little worried, you know,
01:52would they come?
01:53And they have come,
01:54which is pretty exciting.
01:55Amazon has two robotics sites in the greater Boston area.
01:59The North Reading location
02:00was part of the acquisition of Kiva in 2012,
02:02which then became Amazon Robotics.
02:04What's unique about this space
02:06is how many roles it houses under one roof,
02:08from designers to scientists to testing engineers.
02:12Can I drive one?
02:12Yeah, absolutely.
02:13It's the result of a decision to not outsource
02:15and maintain control of the supply chain.
02:17They seem to be communicating their own little language.
02:20This one's got a bin.
02:21This one I'm controlling.
02:23This one has a mind of its own.
02:24I don't really know what it's doing,
02:25but it's chirping a lot,
02:26so it seems to be happy.
02:27I pursue this strategy of vertical integration,
02:30of building every aspect of the supply chain
02:33and manufacturing the robots.
02:34Well, one, speed, right?
02:36The thing is having end-to-end control for vertical
02:39is we think gives us speed.
02:42And every time you start decoupling things,
02:44you're going to lose that speed.
02:45And then you're also going to lose the insight
02:48that the other processes have
02:50or the other functions have.
02:51By having it all together,
02:53that feedback loop is super tight.
02:55And the second thing is innovation, right?
02:57We get lots of great insight from those other teams.
03:00So the teams that are building the manufacturing teams
03:02have a large voice into the design cycle
03:05and they influence our design and impact our design.
03:07The folks that are deploying it also here
03:10have a large voice into the impact.
03:13This is where a lot of the software development is done
03:15for these products.
03:15And you can start with an idea on a whiteboard.
03:18Nine months later,
03:19you can see it all of a sudden being in a prototype
03:22in the test lab.
03:2318 months later, you see your product rolling off the line.
03:25That is like super empowering.
03:27When new candidates come in and think,
03:29what's the Amazon special sauce in robotics?
03:32This is it.
03:33Amazon is number seven
03:34on this year's most innovative companies list.
03:36And its robotics program is helping lead the charge
03:38on innovation.
03:39Multiple robots are developed or tested here in Westboro,
03:42fulfilling different roles from lifting to sorting
03:45to getting out of the way of humans.
03:47We're going to see your favorite robot.
03:48Proteus, yeah.
03:49When we started that, there was a team of six.
03:51And often where innovation gets stifled
03:53is when you overstaff a program too early.
03:56And sometimes the best path to success
03:58is to keep it super small with highly talented people
04:01who can move at a pace that a larger team will slow us down.
04:05Is the main thing that you're working on these arms
04:07and testing out the Proteus?
04:08So Proteus is my specialty.
04:10These are very complicated systems.
04:12And are you working on the engineering side as well?
04:13Or is it more on the testing
04:15once it's actually out here in production?
04:17So my particular job is with testing.
04:20We'd rather find problems here, get them fixed,
04:22and then push the fixed versions with the improvements
04:24and updates out to production
04:26in order to make the system even better.
04:28What's it like working alongside robots?
04:30Oh, it's great.
04:31I really enjoy this.
04:32I've been doing this for quite a while.
04:33So I've really, really taken a liking to the robots,
04:36both the arms, the drive units,
04:38the combination of the two of them working together.
04:41Ah, it's really fun.
04:43Robotics are going to fundamentally change
04:45what their jobs are, right?
04:46What tasks they're doing every day.
04:47So how do you think about that?
04:48And that's super exciting too.
04:50It's creating new opportunities.
04:51I think we've all seen,
04:52there's always this tension between
04:54how does this impact people?
04:56And I think we've always seen that
04:57automation and technology breakthroughs
04:59create opportunities and create new jobs.
05:01And I think it's hard to argue
05:02that Amazon has not been a great job creator
05:05in almost every domain you can think about.
05:08But automation is still inevitably going to come
05:10with concerns over worker replacement.
05:12And I know Amazon has invested a lot,
05:14more than a billion dollars in this process of upskilling
05:17or teaching new skills to workers.
05:19Do you think upskilling is the solution
05:22to fears of replacement?
05:24There are two things.
05:25We continue to grow at a very high rate.
05:27And so the number of facilities,
05:29the number of jobs we're creating
05:31is been exciting to see.
05:33And then the second part is, yeah,
05:34the upskilling is creating new,
05:35exciting jobs and opportunities
05:37for potentially a group of people
05:38that wouldn't have that opportunity.
05:39And so I think in both dimensions,
05:41we're going to see growth.
05:42And it's not just upskilling that's front of mind.
05:45A Senate committee report released in December
05:47reported conditions in Amazon warehouses were unsafe
05:50and prioritized speed over safety.
05:52How much does safety play a role
05:53in your thinking about how robotics
05:55are going to play into Amazon's process?
05:58It's front and center.
05:59Before we start talking about productivity and efficiency,
06:01we start with safety.
06:03As we think about the opportunity
06:05within the fulfillment centers to innovate and improve,
06:08we tend to look at the most challenging tasks,
06:10lifting, manipulating, moving things.
06:13We're excited about what we've done
06:15and we have a new facility
06:16with some of our newer generation technology
06:18that is 10x the automation of our previous generation.
06:22Amazon is known for its relentless pursuit
06:24of efficiency and productivity.
06:26Of course, they're always trying to get packages
06:28to customers faster and faster.
06:30Robotics is really key to making that happen.
06:32At the same time, safety is a huge concern for Amazon.
06:35Joe talked about how a lot of worker functions,
06:38and especially the worker functions
06:40like repetitive movements that often lead to injuries
06:42are being replaced by robots.
06:44And I think Amazon acknowledges this
06:46and they put a lot of investment into upskilling
06:48or this process of basically teaching workers new skills
06:52and being able to give them new jobs.
06:54I mean, whether that's successful, I think,
06:55remains to be seen and you'll still have fears
06:57of what replacement looks like for workers.
06:59But you can see that robotics really will be the future
07:02in trying to replace a lot of the different areas
07:05that we do associate with workplace injuries and risk.
07:08I asked Joe whether he did see a future
07:10in which the warehouses or the fulfillment centers
07:12would be fully automated.
07:13And I think Amazon hasn't even fully thought that through,
07:16but I think even for a company as innovative as Amazon,
07:19it's still unclear what this might look like
07:2110 years down the road.
07:22The great thing about Amazon,
07:24it so operates in many ways like a startup,
07:27has a startup mentality of speed.
07:29You're able to innovate at a speed
07:31and you don't get bogged down with bureaucracy
07:33over sometimes a big company.
07:35I mean, there've been challenging times
07:36when I was sure this thing was gonna work in some way
07:39and it didn't, and the disappointment of your idea
07:42just didn't pan out.
07:44But to see the impact when you go globally,
07:45our products have made to our associates,
07:47that flywheel of driving customer selection,
07:49lower prices and speed, I get to see it real time.
07:52And so that's been pretty,
07:53it's like a once in a lifetime opportunity.