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Amazon has rapidly grown from an online book store to a purveyor of nearly every sort of product made, as well as a technology behemoth offering cloud services and Kindles. Behind the web façade is a sprawling network of distribution centers where temp workers scramble like rats in a maze, pulling boxes off shelves, directed by handheld devices that not only show where the goods are stored but the most efficient path to walk. These devices also monitor each worker’s performance, coaxing them to move faster, move faster, move faster.
Interesting insight into the impacts of digital transformation of retail. And as we shy away from stores for more than the necessary showrroming, warehouse fulfillment centers will become more and more the norm. Amazon is leading the digital improvements but it looks like work in Amazon warehouses is very close of its pre-digital days, as far as human tasks are concerned.
I spent few summers in the early 1980s working in such a warehouse and the work was very similar, except for the amount of digital technology involved. Not a great place to work but a great incentive to stay in school and study. I'd rather be a microserf than an "amazon-serf"...
That being saidd, all the warehouse fulfillment workers will get similar pressure to deliver and work under the watchful eye of computer systems that track every moves. It reminds me a of a short 5 minute video on the work of warehouse workers at online grocery chain Ocado in the UK. Although it is a corporate video, the work pace and environment feels eerily similar to that presented in this Amazon blog post.