New Amazon Robots Increase Order Processing By 25%

By reimagining how Amazon stores and manages inventory at its sites, Sequoia will help the company leverage customer satisfaction with greater speed and increased accuracy for delivery estimates, while also improving employee safety at our facilities. Sequoia allows Amazon to identify and store inventory received at its fulfillment centers up to 75% faster than we can today. This means the company can list items for sale on Amazon.com more quickly, benefiting both sellers and customers. When orders are placed, Sequoia also reduces the time it takes to process an order through a fulfillment center by up to 25%, which improves our shipping predictability and increases the number of goods we can offer for Same-Day or Next-Day shipping.

Building off a series of research and development efforts, Sequoia integrates multiple robot systems to containerize our inventory into totes, bringing together mobile robots, gantry systems, robotic arms, and a new ergonomic employee workstation. The system works by having mobile robots transport containerized inventory directly to a gantry, a tall frame with a platform supporting equipment that can either restock totes or send them to an employee to pick out inventory that customers have ordered.

These totes come to employees at a newly-designed ergonomic workstation that allows them to do all their work in their power zone, between mid-thigh and mid-chest height. With this system, employees will no longer have to regularly reach above their heads or squat down to pick customer orders, supporting our efforts to reduce the risk of injuries.