New Age Warehousing
Warehouse management is a key challenge for companies selling goods on the internet. As we discussed in class, companies such as Zappos use robots to automate the process. Here are a couple of videos about the Kiva Robots that Zappos uses.
Summarize the benefits of Kiva to Zappos.
The Kiva system bring the assembly line to the warehouse worker to fill order more quickly that increase efficiency and productivity. Instead of having people walking around a warehouse with a cart and looking for ordered items to put into boxes, the robot automatically bring the ordered items to the workers. Because of the robot system, workers can place items randomly without worrying organizing or placing everything in the correct location and order. All the worker need to do is find a available place, and scan the barcode to record location. The Kiva system has saved lots of time in unloading and order picking process.
The Kiva system that Zappos uses provides flexibility to warehousing like never before. Before Kiva, companies would run on the same assembly line, with each process done in the same exact way, with each task preceding another assigned task every time. With Kiva, the parallel warehousing processes makes for a much more efficient warehousing system, in which these robotic machines bring the products to the warehouse worker, not having the warehouse worker having to find the product in addition to shipping it. With Kiva, it not only lowers costs by not having to pay additional workers to find products, but makes the warehouse significantly faster, which allows for increased revenue opportunities because you are not overloaded with orders.