Amazon spent around $1.2 billion on Zappos.com, a large online shoe retailer. Recently they took out their wallet again, and this time for the second biggest spend in their history. Amazon will pay $775 million for Kiva Systems, which produces robots that move around goods in warehouses.
Will the robots start replacing all personnel in the Amazon DCs? No, but with 65% increase in personnel in 2011, they might be looking for ways to cut down on staff.
“Amazon has long used automation in its fulfillment centers, and Kiva’s technology is another way to improve productivity by bringing the products directly to employees to pick, pack and stow,” Dave Clark, vice president of global customer fulfillment at Amazon, said.
See the robots at work in this video:
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