The Impact of Warehouse Automation in Amazon's
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IJISET - International Journal of Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, Vol. 7 Issue 8, August 2020
ISSN (Online) 2348 – 7968 | Impact Factor (2020) – 6.72
www.ijiset.com
The Impact of Warehouse Automation in Amazon’s
Success
Joshua Laber1, Ravindra Thamma2, E. Daniel Kirby3
1,2,3
Robotics and Mechatronics Engineering Technology, Central Connecticut State University,
New Britain, CT 06053, USA
Abstract
With the increasing popularity of ecommerce, the most influential retailer in the field today is Amazon.com, Inc. The formerly small
online bookstore has grown massively since the early days of the company. As demand increased and expected delivery times decreased,
the retailer had invested heavily in technology to make their distribution network more efficient. This paper examines Amazon.com’s
innovations in supply chain management and distribution through their use of automation. The major element of the company’s
developments is their investments in multiple robotics systems and cloud computing. As they continue to invest in employee training,
upskilling programs, and innovation, the company will likely maintain their trend of continued growth.
Keywords: Automation, Warehouse, Amazon.com, Distribution, Upskilling, Kiva, Drive Unit, RoboStow, Palletizer, Amazon Web
Services, AWS, RoboMaker, S3
1. Introduction
Since Amazon.com was founded in 1994, the company has been at the forefront of retail innovation. As the company
expanded from being an online bookseller to become the largest retailer in the world, Amazon.com had invested massively
into technology to improve distribution in their warehouses and services for their customers. In 2012, Amazon.com
purchased Kiva Systems which kickstarted their path toward automation. The company also began working with other
vendors to automate their distribution centers. They have additionally created programs to assist workers displaced by
automaton through improving their skills and education. The company also invested in cloud computing and storage for use
in robotics automation. Amazon.com has grown 800% in employees and 359% in revenue since 2012. [1] The key to
Amazon’s success has been their investments in automation.
2. History of Amazon
2.1 Early Days: Pre-automation Era
Amazon.com began business in 1995 as a simple online bookstore operated out of company founder Jeff Bezos’ garage.
Bezos believed that the key to success was to “get big fast.” The company quickly expanded beyond selling books and into
other consumer products such as music and video at first, and then into consumer electronics and toys in the late 1990’s. [2]
Since the mid-90’s, the amount of storage expanded from a few shelves in their Seattle, WA office to over 175 warehouses
across North America and Europe today. [ 3] Amazon.com warehouses are named “Fulfillment Centers” because their
service does not just include storage, but also includes distribution. At Fulfillment Centers, orders are picked, packed, and
shipped to customers. In 2006, Amazon.com took its first major step into cloud computing with the public launch of
Amazon Web Services, which allows businesses to use Amazon.com storage space and computational power.[4] Around the
same time, the Fulfillment by Amazon program was launched, which allows third party sellers to store their products at
Amazon.com warehouses and sell through Amazon.com. [5] Due to increasing demand, Amazon.com was compelled to
invest in automation to make their Fulfillment Centers more efficient.
2.2 Automation related purchases
Amazon.com purchased Kiva Systems in 2012 for $775 million, which has become the basis of its automation initiative.
Kiva was renamed Amazon Robotics in 2015. In 2019, Amazon.com acquired Canvas Technology, a company that builds
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IJISET - International Journal of Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, Vol. 7 Issue 8, August 2020
ISSN (Online) 2348 – 7968 | Impact Factor (2020) – 6.72
www.ijiset.com
robotic vehicles with computer guided vision. [6] Also, in the same year, Amazon.com began working with other vendors
such as CMC, Soft Robotics, and SmartPac for packaging, picking, and wrapping, respectively. [7]
3. Robotics Systems
3.1 Kiva
Amazon uses multiple types of robot arms to grasp and move items as needed. The smaller robot is the palletizer, which
picks up products from conveyor belts to place them on pallets. The larger robot is the Robo-Stow, which is a six-ton
robotic arm that lifts pallets of goods up a distance of 7.3 m between floors. [8] The Robo-Stow has a carrying capacity of
1360 kg.[9]
A drive unit is a robot that lifts a shelf and autonomously carries it to a worker for picking and storing products. When
Amazon.com purchased Kiva in 2012, the original model of drive unit was the DU 1000. [10] This robot is 600 mm wide,
750 mm long, and 300 mm tall. It weighs 110 kg and can lift about 450 kg. It travels at a maximum speed of 4.68 km/h. [11]
The variant for carrying oversized items is the DU 3000, which lifts 1,360 kg. [10] In 2019, Amazon.com introduced two
new models, the Hercules and the Pegasus. The Hercules is a successor to the original drive unit. Compared to the original it
uses half the amount of parts, is 100 mm shorter, and can lift an additional 226.8 kg. The Pegasus is similar to the Hercules,
except that it has a small conveyor belt mounted on top. Amazon.com had also introduced the Xanthus, which is a modular
robot. It can be equipped with add-ons that allow it to do sortation or stack containers. All current drive units use multiple
cameras to read barcodes to find its own position to navigate the warehouse. Amazon.com currently uses 100,000 drive
units across Fulfillment Centers. [12]
To solve the issue of safety while workers are on the same floor as the operating drive units, Amazon.com created the
Robotic Tech Vest. Before the Robotic Tech Vest, employees had to mark zones where they would be working so the robots
would avoid the area. [13] The vest sends a signal to the robotics system to mark the area around the worker as an obstacle
to the drive units.
3.2 Canvas Technology
CANVAS Technology was founded in 2015 with the purpose of moving objects around a warehouse more effectively. [14]
In 2017, the company unveiled their first device, the CANVAS Cart, which is an autonomous industrial cart. It can travel by
continuously mapping the environment in 3D and share the data to other carts in the fleet. As Amazon.com’s current range
of drive units use markers to find location, the company acquired CANVAS Technology for their computer vision
technology in 2019. [15]
3.3 CMC CartonWrap
Amazon.com also began working with CMC Srl to automate packaging processes. CMC CartonWrap machines pack 600-
700 boxes per hour, which is 4-5 times the speed of the average human worker. Amazon.com have considered adding a pair
of CartonWrap machines to dozens of Fulfillment Centers as of 2019. [16]
3.4 SmartPac
The other packaging machine Amazon.com uses is the SmartPac, which is an automated machine that packages products in
patented envelopes. Implemented along with CMC CartonWrap, these labor-saving systems can reduce packing workers by
more than half. [7]
3.5 Soft Robotics
Amazon.com is currently still working on improving grasping technology. The company have tested grippers from various
companies, including ones from Soft Robotics. Soft Robotics is a start-up from the Boston-area which produces octopus-
like robotic hands that can softly pick and place items. [17]
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IJISET - International Journal of Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, Vol. 7 Issue 8, August 2020
ISSN (Online) 2348 – 7968 | Impact Factor (2020) – 6.72
www.ijiset.com
4. Training
4.1 Career Choice
In 2012, Amazon.com created the Career Choice Program, which allows employees to expand their vocational
options by aiding with education costs. The initiative only funds tuition in high paying, in-demand areas, as stated by the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, such as Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering,
Information Technology, Computer Science, Healthcare, and Accounting. The program pays 95% of tuition and fees and up
to $3,000 per year for four years, to cover costs of textbooks and related fees. [18] Amazon.com has even built classrooms
inside their Fulfillment Centers for the convenience of workers in the program.
4.2 Upskilling 2025
In 2019, Amazon.com created a new initiative to upskill 100,000 employees by investing over $700,000 in new training
programs. Expanding on the Career Choice program, the company had introduced five other plans entitled Amazon
Technical Academy, Associate2Tech, Machine Learning University, Amazon Apprenticeship, and AWS Training and
Certification. [19] Amazon Technical Academy trains employees in software engineering. Associate2Tech trains associates
for IT support technician positions and covers the costs of A+ Certification. Machine Learning University is a six-week
program to teach skills in machine learning. Amazon Apprenticeship gives paid training and apprenticeships certified by the
Department of Labor. AWS Training and Certification gives free classroom training to develop expertise in the cloud and
become certified in AWS. [19] These programs give workers displaced by automation a chance to improve their abilities for
the changing labor market.
5. Software
5.1 What is Amazon Web Services?
AWS began as an idea in 2000 for an e-commerce service to assist third-party vendors create shopping sites using
Amazon’s platform. The idea developed into the first AWS service, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) in 2006. EC2 is
a web service that allows any company to use Amazon’s computational infrastructure for their own applications. [20] The
second major component AWS launched with is Simple Storage Service (S3), which is a service for companies to store and
withdraw data uploaded to the AWS cloud. When EC2 launched, the service used Amazon Linux as an operating system
and has since expanded to support many different OSs, including Windows. [21]
The benefits of using a cloud computing service are the company can pay for only how much data is consumed, the
advantage of economies of scale, not having to worry about capacity or data center maintenance, and speed. AWS has
grown from compute and storage services to hundreds of products designed for specific use cases including analytics,
AR/VR, cost management, blockchain, content streaming, database, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, media,
security, and robotics. [22]
5.2 Adoption of Amazon Web Services
Amazon.com depended on Oracle database software for data management from the beginning of the company. The
company used scripts to regularly backup data with Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) to magnetic tape, which would be
catalogued and managed by robots in the onsite tape library. Backup tapes would be sent to an offsite facility for storage.
RMAN would automatically backup and check integrity of the data, and then update the catalogue to indicate changes, as
shown in Fig. 4. As Amazon.com expanded, the tape-based database solution became more costly and complicated to
manage. With the release of Oracle Database 10g, new features were added that allowed Amazon.com to backup Oracle
databases to the cloud storage service, Amazon S3, provided by AWS. The company first verified if switching to cloud-
based storage would work better than the tape-based system. They found that tape had high costs for software licensing,
hardware, and physical storage space that Amazon S3 cloud storage did not have. Tape storage has to be physically
relocated and reinstalled as new hardware is purchased. When there is a hardware failure, a person would have to repair,
locate, and mount the appropriate tapes. To find if switching to Amazon S3 would be valuable, they compared security, cost,
65IJISET - International Journal of Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, Vol. 7 Issue 8, August 2020
ISSN (Online) 2348 – 7968 | Impact Factor (2020) – 6.72
www.ijiset.com
difficulty for administrators, availability, and durability. They concluded that using Amazon S3 would save the company $1
million per year, and backup and restore processes were faster using the cloud over using tape. By October 2011, 50% of
backups were moved to S3 and by August 2012, 85% of databases were using S3, as shown in Fig. 5. [23]
The move to Amazon Web Services did not stop with the backup solution. Amazon began shifting away from Oracle
database software to AWS between 2013 and 2014, as shown in Fig. 6. The main issue Amazon encountered was that
Oracle could not scale to fulfill Amazon’s requirements. [24]
The company realized that their database administrators spent too much time managing hardware, licensing, and simply
keeping the system running. In October 2019, Amazon completed their database transition from Oracle to AWS. The
company migrated 7,500 Oracle databases carrying 75 petabytes to many AWS services including DyamoDB, Aurora,
Relational Database Service (RDS), and Redshift. Each team had the option to choose the AWS service that would be most
effective. The migration had multiple benefits including reducing database costs by 60%, reducing latency by 40%, and
administrative overhead by 70%. [25]
5.3 AWS RoboMaker
One of the included services in AWS is RoboMaker, which allows developers to create, test, and deploy robotic
applications. The service uses the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) as the framework and integrate applications
with AWS services such as analytics and machine learning services. RoboMaker provides tools for developers to simplify
complex challenges such as processing data from sensor, moving autonomously, and object and language recognition. The
service includes the ability to test robots in a development environment, simulate tasks and movements, and manage fleets
for remote deployment. The AWS simulation environment allows for running several simulations simultaneously that can
test robots in pre-built worlds. The robotic applications can be then deployed to the robot over-the-air through AWS IoT
Greengrass. RoboMaker is used by companies such as Stanley Black & Decker and Robot Care Systems, as well as NASA.
[26] Stanley Black & Decker uses the service to train construction robots. Data is collected from imaging sensors to create
3D models of construction sites for training autonomous ground vehicles and UAVs to traverse the environment. Robot
Care Systems created a smart walker that uses RoboMaker for connecting disabled and senior citizens to doctors and family,
go around obstructions, and process voice commands. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses the service for simulating
rover designs to analyze hardware configuration and execute tests. [27] RoboMaker allows for companies to quickly create
and deploy robotic applications without having to build a custom infrastructure for the applications requirements.
6. Outlook
6.1 Investments
Amazon.com plans to invest $40 million into a new facility known as an Amazon Robotics Innovation Hub, which
set to open in 2021. The 350,000 square feet building in Westborough, Massachusetts is expected to create 200
manufacturing and technology jobs, on top of the 4,000 skilled jobs in the state. [28] Amazon.com has 18 Tech Hubs across
North America as of 2019, but the Amazon Robotics Innovation Hub would be the first dedicated to the robotics
program. [29]
6.2 Trends
Since buying Kiva in 2012, Amazon.com had grown by 700,000 employees, or 800%, and opened 149Fulfillment
Centers, as shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, respectively. [30] [7] The company is expected to open an additional 33 warehouse
locations in the US as of January 2020, as shown in Fig. 3. The company is also planning to use automation to solve the
“last mile” issue of delivery. [31] In 2019, testing began on an autonomous delivery vehicle known as Scout. The 6-wheeled
Scout carries one package to the customer’s home. [32] In 2020, Amazon.com won a patent for a delivery vehicle that
carries multiple customer’s orders. The lockers on this vehicle are unlocked by using a security code sent to the customer’s
mobile phone. [33] The company also had purchased Zoox, a self-driving vehicle start-up for over $1.2 billion. [34]
66IJISET - International Journal of Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, Vol. 7 Issue 8, August 2020
ISSN (Online) 2348 – 7968 | Impact Factor (2020) – 6.72
www.ijiset.com
7. Tables, Figures and Equations
7.1 Tables and Figures
Fig. 1: Amazon.com: Number of Employees
Fig. 2: Growth of Amazon.com Warehouses in the US.
Fig. 3: Amazon fulfillment centers across the US
67IJISET - International Journal of Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, Vol. 7 Issue 8, August 2020
ISSN (Online) 2348 – 7968 | Impact Factor (2020) – 6.72
www.ijiset.com
Fig. 4: Amazon.com’s Database Backup Infrastructure before Migration
Fig. 5: Amazon.com’s Database Backup Infrastructure after Migration
Fig. 6: Amazon.com’s Migration from Oracle databases to AWS
8. Conclusions
Amazon.com’s success comes from their strong drive for innovation in automation. After purchasing Kiva System in 2012,
the company had begun creating and deploying multiple types of autonomous robots including the Palletizer, Robo-Stow,
and numerous variants of drive units. The company continued to innovate with the buyout of CANVAS Technology, which
technology would be used for creating new drive robots with improved vision systems. Amazon.com also works with other
companies such as SmartPac and CartonWrap for automated packaging and wrapping of products for shipment.
Amazon.com created the Upskilling 2025 initiative, which features a range of programs to help workers become skilled in
subjects such as software engineering, IT, machine learning, and cloud computing to assist workers gain skills and education.
Investments in cloud computing and storage created services such as RoboMaker which allowed developers to create and
deploy robotic applications quickly. The company continues to invest in automation by funding a new Tech Hub dedicated
68IJISET - International Journal of Innovative Science, Engineering & Technology, Vol. 7 Issue 8, August 2020
ISSN (Online) 2348 – 7968 | Impact Factor (2020) – 6.72
www.ijiset.com
to robotics innovation. Amazon.com also is pushing to expand into delivery with their recent experiments and patents with
autonomous delivery vehicles and acquisition of Zoox. Amazon.com is an example of an ecommerce company that
successfully uses automation to create an efficient distribution network and growth.
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ISSN (Online) 2348 – 7968 | Impact Factor (2020) – 6.72
www.ijiset.com
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Joshua Laber, Student attending Central Connecticut State University, Robotics and Mechatronics Engineering Technology Major, Mathematics Minor,
CCSU ISA Club Secretary, ATMAE member
Dr. Ravindra Thamma is currently a Professor of Robotics and Mechatronics at Central Connecticut State University. He serves as Department Chair of
Manufacturing and Construction Management at CCSU and as program coordinator of Robotics and Mechatronics. His teaching and research interests
are programmable controllers, robotics, linear control systems, and intelligent systems. He is a member of IEEE, ISA, ATMAE.
Dr. Daniel Kirby is currently an Associate Professor of Manufacturing Management and Robotics and Mechatronics at CCSU. He serves as program
coordinator of Manufacturing Management. His teaching and research interests are manufacturing, automation, Industry 4.0, workforce development, and
process optimization. He is a member of ARM, ATMAE, and ISA.
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