Amazon enlists 15,000 robot ‘elves’ for help during holiday season

The Kiva robots help the company more efficiently move inventory during the busiest shopping season of the year.

Online retail giant Amazon.com has created an army of 15,000 robots to help it deliver packages over the holidays.

The company deployed the Kiva robots in 10 U.S. fulfillment centers on Cyber Monday in order to move around tens of millions of units and streamline operations, according to a MarketWatch report.

Dubbing it an “eighth-generation fulfillment center,” the project has been in the works for months and comes just in time to meet the booming demand of the holidays. The company has also hired 80,000 temporary workers to handle the demands of the season, the most important for retailers.

In a holiday twist, they are referred to internally as “Kiva elves” and are capable of lifting 750 pounds. They have been able to cut cycle times from an hour to less than 15 minutes, according to the report.

Another way the robots improve efficiency is by eliminating a need for aisles and allow inventory to be placed on all four sides of an inventory pod, increasing storage by 50 percent per square foot.

Dave Clark, Amazon senior vice president of worldwide operations and customer service, said the company is not trying to replace humans, and that the robots are merely assistants that relieve humans from having to pull inventory from library-like shelves. Instead, the robots help current workers do their job better, Clark said.

Kiva robots operate in 10 of the 50 fulfillment centers Amazon has in the United States. There are 59 other fulfillment centers outside the U.S.

Amazon is trying to make sure it doesn’t repeat the mistakes of last year, when they failed to deliver Christmas packages on time — mostly due to a large amount of people placing late orders. It led to thousands of refunds being issued. This time, Amazon has it right, Clark said.

Another upgrade is a “vision system” that takes x-ray images of packages and then uploads the data, which speeds unloading time to just 30 minutes when it had taken hours before. Also, a new computer helps employees work more efficiently, and a robotic arm can better move heavy inventory.