![]() Technological innovation and internationality play a primary role thanks to strategic partnerships (Fiera Milano – UCIMA) and specific development and promotional plans. The 25th edition features a visit experience structured according to the target markets of exhibiting companies and meeting the expectations of both visitors and exhibitors. fulfillment centers for small and non-specialty inventory, according to logistics consultancy MWPVL International, which could be ripe for the machines.IPACK-IMA 2022 is an exhibition specializing in food and non-food processing and packaging. The company is also setting up nearly two dozen more U.S. The machines have the potential to automate far more than 24 jobs per facility, one of the sources said. ![]() The company has installed them in busy warehouses that are driving distance from Seattle, Frankfurt, Milan, Amsterdam, Manchester and elsewhere, the people said. Still other types of automation, like the robotic grocery assembly system of Ocado Group PLC, are the focus of much industry interest.īut the boxing machines are already proving helpful to Amazon. The super-hot glue closing the boxes can pile up and halt a machine. They need a technician on site who can fix problems as they arise, a requirement Amazon would rather do without, the two sources said. This saves money not just by reducing labor but by reducing wasted packing materials as well. Humans still place items on a conveyor, but machines then build boxes around them and take care of the sealing and labeling. Soft Robotics declined to comment on its work with Amazon but said it has handled a wide and ever-changing variety of products for multiple large retailers.īelieving that grasping technology is not ready for prime time, Amazon is automating around that problem when packing customer orders. While advances in artificial intelligence are improving machines’ accuracy, there is still no guarantee that robotic hands can prevent a marmalade jar from slipping and breaking, or switch seamlessly from picking up an eraser to grabbing a vacuum cleaner.Īmazon has tested different vendors’ technology that it may one day use for picking, including from Soft Robotics, a Boston-area startup that drew inspiration from octopus tentacles to make grippers more versatile, one person familiar with Amazon’s experimentation said. Many venture-backed companies and university researchers are racing to automate this work. Some stow inventory, while others pick customer orders and still others grab those orders, placing them in the right size box and taping them up. Interest in boxing technology sheds light on how the e-commerce behemoths are approaching one of the major problems in the logistics industry today: finding a robotic hand that can grasp diverse items without breaking them.Īmazon employs countless workers at each fulfillment center who do variations of this same task. Walmart started 3.5 years ago and has since installed the machines in several U.S. Five rows of workers at a facility can turn into two, supplemented by two CMC machines and one SmartPac, the person said. ![]() Including other machines known as the “SmartPac,” which the company rolled out recently to mail items in patented envelopes, Amazon’s technology suite will be able to automate a majority of its human packers. “It’s truly about efficiency and savings,” one of the people said. Though Amazon has announced it intends to speed up shipping across its Prime loyalty program, this latest round of automation is not focused on speed. The machines require one person to load customer orders, another to stock cardboard and glue and a technician to fix jams on occasion. They crank out 600 to 700 boxes per hour, or four to five times the rate of a human packer, the sources said. The new machines, known as the CartonWrap from Italian firm CMC Srl, pack much faster than humans. At the same time, employees that stay with the company can be trained to take up more technical roles. Those have high turnover because boxing multiple orders per minute over 10 hours is taxing work. Rather than lay off workers, the person said, the world’s largest online retailer will one day refrain from refilling packing roles. A key to its goal of a leaner workforce is attrition, one of the sources said.
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