This holiday season, many turn to online shopping to send and receive purchases for gifts. Current industry solutions call for managers and workers to pull inventory and get them ready to ship, but Amazon has banded with Kiva Systems to cut links from the supply chain and provide products to consumers at a higher speed.
Amazon’s acquisition of Kiva Systems allows them to utilize industrial app development to simplify their picking and packing process. So instead of the pick-and-pack system of workers choosing the correct products-Kiva’s robots bring the products to the managers. Their mission was for products to be able to choose themselves and benefits the workers at Amazon who would have to move across large distribution centers to find products and fulfill orders. Using industrial app development, Kiva can provide quick and low-cost set up, inexpensive and time-saving operations with scalability and maintainability across the world.
Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president for worldwide operation and customer service adds that “the Kiva drive units are about a foot tall and weigh about 350 pounds. They can lift 700 pounds.” Their in-house software determines which items each packer at a station needs and in what order. It then sends those parameters to robots in the warehouse, telling them to bring the shelving units that contain those items to the packer.
Texas and nine other locations are now the main distribution centers utilizing Kiva’s hardware and software solutions for Amazon.