#Fulfillment centers in New York Warehouse in new york warehouse management system

[metropack]

Tips for Maximizing Efficiency with Your FBA Prep Center:

Running an e-commerce business through Amazon's FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) platform can be a lucrative endeavor, but it requires careful planning and organization. One essential aspect of this process is utilizing an FBA prep center. These centers streamline the process of preparing and shipping products to Amazon warehouses, saving time and resources for sellers. In New York, where the e-commerce industry thrives, leveraging an FBA prep center can significantly enhance your operational efficiency. Here are some invaluable tips for maximizing efficiency with your FBA prep center in New York.

Choose the Right FBA Prep Center:

Selecting the appropriate FBA prep center in New York is crucial for your business's success. Look for a facility with a strong reputation for reliability, quality service, and adherence to Amazon's guidelines. Conduct thorough research, read reviews, and visit the premises if possible to ensure it meets your requirements.

Communication is Key:

Maintain open and clear communication with your chosen FBA prep center. Clearly communicate your expectations, requirements, and any specific instructions regarding packaging, labeling, or handling of your products. Regular communication fosters a collaborative relationship and ensures that both parties are on the same page.

Optimize Inventory Management:

Efficient inventory management is essential for minimizing storage costs and avoiding stockouts or overstock situations. Work closely with your FBA prep center to establish an organized system for receiving, storing, and tracking inventory. Utilize inventory management tools provided by the prep center or integrate your existing systems for seamless coordination.

Streamline Packaging and Labeling:

Standardized packaging and labeling procedures are essential for ensuring consistency and compliance with Amazon's guidelines. Work with your FBA prep center to develop efficient packaging solutions that protect your products during transit while minimizing excess materials and costs. Invest in high-quality labels and printing equipment to ensure accurate labeling of each item.

Utilize Technology:

Harness the power of technology to streamline operations and improve efficiency. Many FBA prep centers offer advanced software solutions for inventory management, order processing, and tracking. Take advantage of these tools to automate repetitive tasks, track shipments in real time, and gain valuable insights into your business's performance.

Implement Quality Control Measures:

Maintaining high standards of quality control is essential for preserving your brand reputation and customer satisfaction. Work closely with your FBA prep center to establish rigorous quality control procedures for inspecting, testing, and verifying the condition of your products before they are shipped to Amazon warehouses. Address any issues promptly to prevent potential returns or negative feedback.

Opt for Value-Added Services:

Consider utilizing value-added services offered by your FBA prep center to enhance the overall customer experience. These services may include bundling products, gift wrapping, or customized branding options. By providing additional value to your customers, you can differentiate your products from competitors and increase customer loyalty.

Monitor Performance Metrics:

Track key performance metrics to calculate the effectiveness of your partnership with the FBA prep center and identify areas for improvement. Monitor metrics such as order accuracy, turnaround time, and customer satisfaction ratings to ensure that your operations are running smoothly. Use this data to make informed decisions and optimize your processes for greater efficiency.

Maintain Flexibility:

Stay adaptable and flexible in your approach to working with your FBA prep center. As your business grows and evolves, you may encounter new challenges or opportunities that require adjustments to your processes. Maintain open communication with the prep center and be willing to explore alternative solutions or strategies to meet your changing needs.

Continuously Seek Improvement:

Strive for continuous improvement in your operations by soliciting feedback from both your customers and your FBA prep center. Take constructive criticism onboard and use it to refine your processes and enhance the overall efficiency of your e-commerce business. By continually seeking ways to optimize performance, you can stand out in the competition and achieve long-term success.

Wrap-Up:

Maximizing efficiency with your New York FBA prep center requires careful planning, effective communication, and a commitment to continuous improvement. By following these tips and leveraging the resources available to you, you can streamline your operations, reduce costs, and ultimately achieve greater success in the competitive world of e-commerce.

[zoey01martinez]

The Cost-Saving Magic of Outsourcing Fulfillment Services to Third-Party Centers

In the fast-paced world of business, companies are increasingly turning to e-commerce fulfilment in New York centres to handle their logistics and order fulfilment needs. This outsourcing trend is not just about convenience; it's a strategic move that can significantly cut costs for businesses. Let's delve into why outsourcing fulfilment services to fulfilment centers New York is a cost-effective solution.

Economies of Scale: Third-party fulfilment centers are experts in what they do, handling the storage, picking, packing, and shipping of products for multiple businesses. This shared-resource model creates economies of scale, allowing fulfilment centers to spread their operational costs across various clients. As a result, each client pays only a fraction of the total expenses, making it more cost-effective than running an individual in-house fulfillment operation.

Reduced Overhead Costs: Running an in-house fulfillment operation involves substantial overhead costs, including rent for warehouse space, labor expenses, utilities, and equipment maintenance. Outsourcing to a fulfillment services New York shifts these overhead costs to the service provider. Businesses can enjoy the benefits of a fully operational fulfillment system without the headache of managing and financing the associated infrastructure.

Expertise and Efficiency: Warehousing New York specialize in logistics and order fulfillment. Their expertise and streamlined processes contribute to increased efficiency. From inventory management to order processing, these centers have honed their operations, minimizing errors and reducing the likelihood of costly mistakes. This efficiency not only saves businesses money but also enhances overall customer satisfaction through accurate and timely order fulfillment.

Additionally, outsourcing fulfilment services to fulfillment warehouse in New York isn't just a trend; it's a strategic business decision that offers tangible cost-saving benefits. From economies of scale to reduced overhead costs and access to specialized expertise, businesses can enjoy the advantages of a well-oiled fulfilment process without the financial burdens of managing it in-house. As companies seek to optimize their operations and focus on their core competencies, outsourcing fulfilment services stands out as a cost-effective and efficient solution in the modern business landscape.

[adminfreight0]

Top Warehouse Services to Enhance Your Supply Chain

WAREHOUSING SERVICES IN NEW YORK

Our warehousing services in New York offer a strategic advantage for businesses seeking secure and efficient storage solutions. Whether you need short-term storage, long-term warehousing, or a dynamic distribution center, we have you covered. Our state-of-the-art facilities, skilled staff, and advanced inventory management systems ensure that your goods are handled with care and precision. With our warehousing services, you gain a competitive edge in streamlining your supply chain, reducing overhead costs, and ensuring on-time deliveries. We provide the space, expertise, and reliability you need to keep your business on the move.

OUR COMPREHENSIVE WAREHOUSING SERVICES INCLUDE

Our warehousing services offer a vital solution for businesses seeking secure and efficient storage. We understand that New York City’s fast pace demands a logistics partner that can keep up. Our state-of-the-art facilities are strategically located to provide you with convenient and reliable storage options.

Storage Solutions: We offer flexible storage options to accommodate a wide range of products, from small items to oversized equipment. Our facilities are equipped to handle your storage needs, whether short-term or long-term.

Security Measures: We prioritize the security of your inventory. Our facilities are equipped with state-of-the-art security systems, including surveillance cameras, access controls, and alarm systems, to safeguard your assets.

Climate-Controlled Storage: For temperature-sensitive products, we provide climate-controlled storage options to maintain the integrity of your goods, ensuring they remain in optimal condition.

Distribution Services: With our distribution services, we can serve as your distribution center, strategically located to reach your target markets quickly and cost-effectively.

Transportation Coordination: If needed, we can handle transportation coordination, ensuring that your goods are seamlessly transported to and from our warehousing facilities.

Our warehousing services warehousing services in NYC are designed to simplify your logistics, reduce operational complexities, and provide the flexibility needed to accommodate the demands of your business.

PRODUCTS HANDLED

E-commerce Inventory

Manufactured Products

Food and Beverages

Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Products

Chemicals

Electronics and Technology

Textiles and Apparel

Furniture and Home Goods

Industrial Equipment

Construction Materials

WAREHOUSING SERVICE COSTS

Warehousing service in NYC costs can vary based on several factors. It’s essential to consider these elements when evaluating and budgeting for warehousing services:

The amount of storage space your goods require plays a significant role in cost. Charges are typically based on square footage, pallet positions, or cubic volume. Also, The length of time you intend to store your goods in the warehouse affects costs. Long-term storage may offer lower rates, while short-term storage is often more expensive. To accurately determine the cost of warehousing services in new york for your specific needs, it’s essential to consult with our team. We can provide a detailed quote based on your requirements.

Get Quote

KEY FEATURES OF OUR WAREHOUSE IN NEW YORK

Our warehouse in New York offers a prime location, ensuring easy access to major transportation routes. It’s equipped with state-of-the-art facilities, including good storage space, racking systems, and climate-controlled zones for optimal storage conditions. Security is a top priority, with 24/7 monitoring through surveillance cameras, access controls, and alarm systems.

Efficient order fulfillment services are available for picking, packing, and shipping your products. Our distribution expertise positions us as a strategic distribution center for swift market access. We offer customization to meet your specific supply chain needs and can coordinate transportation to ensure seamless movement to and from our warehouse.

Reporting and analytics tools provide insights into your inventory and logistics, allowing for optimized operations and informed decisions. Value-added services, including labeling, kitting, repackaging, and quality control, cater to unique needs. We can also assist with compliance requirements and necessary documentation to ensure regulatory standards are met.

Enhance your supply chain with reliable distribution services in New York provided by experienced professionals. Discover efficient warehousing and distribution companies offering top-notch truck services near you.

[hightechlogistics]

How fulfillment centers are helping in an optimized warehouse management system?

Fulfillment centers are different from conventional distribution centers. The former is used extensively by e-commerce companies to help them fulfill orders for their end customers; while the latter is meant for distribution to retail centers. For small-scale businesses, the growth of fulfillment centers has helped them save their operational costs, mostly logistics. One of the core areas is the warehouse management system. How?

Stock out, mispicks, misships, and damaged products are four issues that constantly bother online sellers, causing them to lose clients and brand value. All of these are related to mismanagement of inventory, shipping, and deliveries. The good thing is that with the help of outsourced fulfillment centers, e-commerce merchants can overcome all of these issues. There are typically two ways of working here – one, the online merchant receives items from the manufacturer, reviews them, and sends them to the fulfillment center; and second, the items are directly sent to the warehouse in New York or any other suitable location, as per the location base of customers.  

For an e-commerce company based in the US, the essence of working with the right fulfillment center in New York is manifold. There is definite cost saving in not having an owned warehouse or physical space to store the products. Inventory management becomes easier, shipping and deliveries become smoother. The headache of managing the logistics part of online selling from one endpoint to another is outsourced. This helps online merchants to focus on their key areas of expertise.

Another advantage in outsourcing lies in the fact related to returns. Returned products go back to the fulfillment center and not the online seller. Also, with volume shipping orders, fulfillment centers can negotiate better rates with shippers; as a result, online sellers go ahead and offer free or discounted shipping charges to customers.

Original Source: Blogger.com

[ebookporn]

Power and Peril: 5 Takeaways on Amazon’s Employment Machine

Outsiders see a business success story for the ages. Many insiders see an employment system under strain.

An Amazon worker tries to return from a Covid-related leave and is mistakenly fired. A wife panics as disability benefits halt for her gravely ill husband. An employee is fired for having a single underproductive day.

An examination by The New York Times into how the pandemic unfolded inside Amazon’s only fulfillment center in New York City, known as JFK8, found that the crisis exposed the power and peril of Amazon’s employment system. The company famously obsessed with satisfying customers achieved record growth and spectacular profits, but its management of hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers was marked at times by critical mistakes, communication lapses and high turnover.

Here are the takeaways

[seriousbusinessforhumans]

A new cache of company records obtained by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting – including internal safety reports and weekly injury numbers from its nationwide network of fulfillment centers – shows that company officials have profoundly misled the public and lawmakers about its record on worker safety. They reveal a mounting injury crisis at Amazon warehouses, one that is especially acute at robotic facilities and during Prime week and the holiday peak.......With weekly data from 2016 through 2019 from more than 150 Amazon warehouses

Amazon often points to the tens of millions of dollars it has invested to enhance safety practices. Yet Amazon’s injury rates have gone up each of the past four years, the internal data shows. In 2019, Amazon fulfillment centers recorded 14,000 serious injuries – those requiring days off or job restrictions.

The data back up the accounts of Amazon warehouse workers and former safety professionals who say the company has used the robots to ratchet up production quotas to the point that humans can’t keep up without hurting themselves. For each of the past four years, injury rates have been significantly higher at Amazon’s robotic warehouses than at its traditional sites.

About an hour south on Interstate 5 from Amazon’s Seattle headquarters is DuPont, Washington, and a company warehouse called BFI3. Last year, its workers experienced the highest injury rates of any Amazon fulfillment center in the country: 22 serious injuries for every 100 workers. That’s a rate more than five times higher than the most recent industry average.

Since the warehouse opened in 2014, Hoyos has seen the production quotas go higher and higher. Managers would closely monitor a computer system that tracks how many items an employee scans every hour and write up workers who weren’t hitting targets. Workers who fell too far behind could be fired.

Those quotas changed dramatically when the robots arrived at Amazon......The robots were too efficient. They could bring items so quickly that the productivity expectations for workers more than doubled, according to a former senior operations manager who saw the transformation. And they kept climbing. At the most common kind of warehouse, workers called pickers – who previously had to grab and scan about 100 items an hour – were expected to hit rates of up to 400 an hour at robotic fulfillment centers. ...........A former senior Amazon safety manager said that within a year or two of introducing the robots, the unintended consequences had become clear to Amazon’s safety team. “We vastly underestimated the effects it was going to have on our associates” 

OSHA called out Amazon for conditions that resulted from the robotics innovation: “The company exposed employees to ergonomic risk factors including stress from repeated bending at the waist and repeated exertions, and standing during entire shifts up to 10 hours, four days a week and sometimes including mandatory overtime shifts.”

Prime Day 2019 was the biggest shopping event in the company’s history. It was also the year’s most dangerous week for injuries at Amazon fulfillment centers, with nearly 400 serious injuries recorded across the country. Reveal calculated those numbers from Amazon’s internal data. Yet Amazon officials have publicly denied that rates spike during these days.

Austin Wendt left his job as an EMT for a private ambulance company in 2016 to take a higher-paying role running the first aid clinic at Amazon’s warehouse BFI3 in DuPont. Eventually, he became the only person responsible for safety at the warehouse during his shifts.........“I never had support from my boss or senior leadership, to do my job effectively or enforce safety,” he said. “There’s so much to do and you’re so far behind, and there’s so many injuries that you could just never get caught up.”

Trying to figure out why, Amazon got a common explanation from workers, according to the report: The work “requires me to move too quickly, so I am forced to either cut corners or not make rate.” Yet not one of the dozens of safety initiatives described in the 2018 and 2019 internal safety reports obtained by Reveal suggests slowing down production quotas to reduce injuries. “In the end, I don’t think it’s that hard of an issue,” Wendt said; the answer is to “lower the rate.” But, he added, “I don’t think that was ever an option in their head or even thought of as a route to take.” 

But the 2015 OSHA investigation of the fulfillment center in New Jersey found that Amazon had failed to record more than two dozen injuries as required, leading to a $7,000 fine. And several former Amazon safety professionals told me that the company used to systematically hide injuries by having safety staff write up “justifications” for not recording injuries that should have been counted by federal regulations. 

Fagan went on to investigate Amazon warehouses in New Jersey again and found the same problems with medical care. Workers were still being discouraged from reporting injuries in 2017 and from seeking outside medical attention in 2019, Fagan found. In another hazard alert letter, OSHA criticized Amazon for explicitly allowing AmCare, Amazon’s system of on-site medical clinics, to delay sending workers to a doctor for up to 21 days. The result was that workers’ injuries got worse while they waited for proper medical care, she said. “The company did not improve,” Fagan, who has since retired, told me.

As U.S. customers drove up sales while they sheltered in place, hundreds of Amazon warehouse workers got sick from COVID-19 and several died......Amazon responded by firing a worker who helped organize a walkout at its Staten Island, New York, fulfillment center. It then fired two employees from the tech side who spoke up in support. That was the last straw for Bray, whose resignation post went viral.

(selected segments of the article)

[dronewarehouse]

Inventory Drones for Resilient Supply Chains

Impact of COVID-19 on Warehouses & DCs

The coronavirus pandemic has affected millions of people across the world, with major economic consequences for months and years to come. With each passing day, the impact of COVID-19 is being felt profoundly on the social, economic and political fronts.

Despite the extraordinary measures and concerted efforts of governments, companies and individuals to curb its development, the virus continues to spread uncontrolled across the globe, causing loss of life and impacting businesses across industries and verticals. Policies designed to deter further transmission of the virus, including travel bans and quarantines, have the unintended consequence of upsetting global supply chains, which in turn disrupt the availability of goods & services.

Given the steady increase in the world’s dependency on China over the last 20 years, the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan created devastating effects throughout most supply chains. Hyundai reported that it “decided to suspend its production lines from operating at its plants in Korea, due to disruptions in the supply of parts resulting from the coronavirus outbreak in China”. American retailer GAP said it is facing a “period of uncertainty regarding the potential impact on both supply chain and customer demand”. The Swedish giant, Volvo Group, too was forced to shut down production because of similar reasons.

Need for resilience

The pandemic has highlighted the need for complete prevention of such disruptions to the supply chain. It is indeed an ambitious goal, yet one that much be sought, since pandemics, wars and other high-impact events are bound to occur. The inventory operations at large, global businesses need to be resilient too, by building the ability to recover from unplanned lockdowns as soon as possible.

To bring resilience to the supply chain means to bring resilience to each of its elements – labor, capital, transportation infrastructure, regulatory policies, global relationships, and acts of God. Every element has its own KPIs and challenges when it comes to handling disruptions.

Need for automation

Labor is an (if not the most) important element of the supply chain operations. Warehouses employ a sizeable workforce for their daily operations – for shipping, receiving, stocktaking, quality control, and overall management.

In lockdown situations such as the current pandemic, warehouses using manual picking or inventory counting have no choice but to halt their operations, thus severely hitting their topline and bottom line. For example, 30 employees of an Amazon warehouse were recently tested positive for COVID-19. Further problems emerged over the week in the form of employee walk-outs at fulfillment centers in New York, Chicago and Detroit, with the staff seeking to shut down some Amazon facilities for thorough sanitisation.

To avoid such disruption, and enable 24x7x365 business operations that match the supply chain velocity, warehouse automation is inevitable. This is becoming evident in cutting-edge warehouse operations, in the form of automated robots and drones that provide a high level of resiliency, maintenance, and performance regardless of uncontrollable external factors such as a pandemic.

Warehouse automation has been synonymous with the use of robots for the indoor and outdoor transport of pallets, cartons, cases and other inventory. Automated storage and retrieval (AS/RS) systems and ‘cobots’ have also developed and deployed at large distribution and fulfillment centers, especially those that enable e-commerce.

Manual stocktaking

3PL service providers must conduct stocktakes at a frequency mandated by their customers, while publicly listed companies must do them as required by auditors and regulators. Both these inventory operations have been hit by the shortage of staff due to mandated lockdowns.

Even in normal times, manual inventory counts can be erroneous, prone to safety incidents, and require expenditure on overtime, not to mention the possibility of pilferage. In the absence of cycle counting staff during lockdowns, manual inventory counts turn out to be even more problematic than usual.

Role of drones

Drones are finding their way into innovation-oriented warehouses for automated inventory counting, thereby reducing the reliance on the manual workforce. Apart from the cost & time savings achieved, and improved productivity, aerial inventory scans make warehouse operations far more resilient to disruptions such as the one we see today. Autonomous drone solutions for inventory also serve as excellent complements to automation technologies such as goods-to-person robots and automated fork-lifts.

While inventory counting has always been considered as a worthy target for automation, the COVID pandemic will force inventory managers and continuous improvement teams to accelerate enterprise-wide drone adoption.

Equipped with autonomous navigation, artificial intelligence, and computer vision techniques, inventory drones for stocktaking enable fully automated, faster, frequent, cheaper and safer inventory counts.

Remote deployment of inventory drones

FlytWare drones can operate fully autonomously and scan front-facing barcodes on one-deep full pallets or case stock, stored in racks. Aerial inventory scans can be done on weekends, at nights, and in-between shifts; this minimizing the impact of pick-and-put-away activities.

The rich inventory data collected by FlytWare can be seamlessly integrated with warehouse management systems. Video, image and barcode data can be transmitted, securely, over the cloud – enabling remote stakeholders to track warehouse inventory in near real time, even during pandemics.

—

Explore the remote deployment of drones for your DC inventory counts and audits. Write to us at info@flytbase.com or schedule a call with the FlytWare team.

References

Coronavirus: Hyundai stops production in South Korea over shortage of parts – https://www.business-standard.com/article/automobile/coronavirus-hyundai-stops-production-in-south-korea-over-shortage-of-parts-120020400850_1.html

Gap Inc pegs coronavirus losses at $100 million and counting – https://fortune.com/2020/03/13/gap-coronavirus-impact-lost-sales-covid-19/

Truckmaker Volvo to temporarily halt production at plants in Gothenburg, Ghent – https://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/commercial-vehicle/mhcv/truckmaker-volvo-to-temparily-halt-production-at-plants-in-gothenburg-ghent/74677802

Factbox: Coronavirus cases reported at 19 of Amazon’s U.S. warehouses – https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-amazon-com-warehou/factbox-coronavirus-cases-reported-at-19-of-amazons-us-warehouses-idUSKBN21I0FA

    The post Inventory Drones for Resilient Supply Chains appeared first on FlytWare.

source https://flytware.com/blog/drones-for-resilient-supply-chains/

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

12 Nov 2019: Apps and in-store retail tech improve sales. Renting everything in the city of boxes. What should the tech industry do about climate change?

[Here’s a newsletter that tumblr didn’t let me post last week. Internet life eh.]

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: Crown and paw]

Sainsbury’s: apps and in-store tech increase sales and margin

Sainsbury’s digital numbers look pretty good:

“Customers who shop with Sainsbury’s through its digital channels spend more than three times as much as those who buy online in-store. The retailer says it aims to bring its full digital business into a single app to make it easier for shoppers to buy across all of its brands and services. Already, it says, 10m customers can access all of its online products through a single log-in. [...] 

Smart scan technology, that customers use to scan and then pay for their shopping, is now available in more than 350 shops. The retailer also introduced Smart Store technology and says that has helped it to remove about 1,000 in-store tasks, saving a million hours of management time, redirected at helping customers and improving availability. It says 2.1m customers are now using the Nectar app, launched as Nectar went digital during the half-year in order to promise more personalised offers. Online grocery sales grew by 7% during the half-year, to account for 8% of grocery sales.”

More digital retailing news:

How a software-based fulfillment platform for online grocery orders impacts profitability - you’ll need to hand over your email address to read this but the takeaways from this US study (?) are that average basket size increases, pick and pack labour costs drop and profit increases, so it’s worth using a dedicated software fulfillment platform for each store at about 70 online orders weekly.

Uncle Ben's uses visual search to directly connect shoppers to food info & recipes - wave your camera at a packet of Uncle Ben’s ready rice and get recipes, meal suggestions and nutritional info etc.

Renting everything in the city of boxes

Last week: 1.5m packages arrive in New York every day, gradually turning the pavements into temporary distribution centres. Instead of warehouses in cities, it’s as if the city is now inside a warehouse.

The only thing you can’t subscribe to now is stability - a very interesting piece about subscription services making everything flexible and fluid (if you rent your wardrobe or furniture you can change it more often). But the costs often disappear into the background, and it reinforces a precarious renter culture. Not that recurring revenue businesses are guaranteed winners:

“Blue Apron, which has had its subscription meal kits copied by numerous competitors, had more than a million subscribers in early 2017; by 2018, that number had dropped to fewer than 800,000.”

What a tour of an Amazon Fulfillment Center reveals:

“The unnerving truth is that facelessness and placenessness are part of the value Amazon offers. Amazon culture is anonymity culture: anonymous objects ordered through an anonymous interface from anonymous sellers, funnelled, sorted, shipped, and delivered by workers who are often unseen. Even the company’s brick-and-mortar Amazon Go markets, which sell prepared foods and snacks, are designed to minimize interpersonal interaction by eliminating things like visible food production and checkout registers.” 

What would a large online retailer look like that made its staff visible, and celebrated them?

What should the tech industry do about climate change?

To fix Climate Change, stop being a techie and start being a human - when people in tech want to help with climate change, the answer is hardly ever make a website. Tech is often unaware of its own carbon footprint:

“Data Centres emit approximately 2% of global Greenhouse Gases (GHG) through electricity and energy demand. [...] Data Centres are roughly equivalent to the whole aviation industry in terms of global impact on Climate Change.”

Alarmingly for the tech industry, the answer might fewer websites or less tech. Or it might be on Drawdown’s list.

Related: Google workers call on company to adopt aggressive climate plan.

Health data and systems

Learning from building an electronic health record: a journey through data - long read from a neurologist/programmer about data and clinical practice. The bits that jump out are the importance of data/software and software capability, the value of small/fast/adaptable approaches, and “not single applications giving views of different data (like we have now) but multiple applications giving views of the same data”.

Artificial Intelligence in the NHS: 

“Artificially Intelligent Systems can carry out or augment health and care tasks that have until now been completed by humans, or have not been possible previously. AI presents significant opportunities for saving money, improving care, and saving lives.”

NHSX is currently looking for two patient advisors.

Apple and gender bias

Some people suspect Apple is showing some gender bias when evaluating men and women for credit limits on their new credit card. Apple and Goldman Sachs (their banking partner) say gender isn’t a factor, but don’t say which factors *do* contribute to the lower credit limits that they offered women. 

Some of that opacity will be customer service staff having no visibility of The System’s decisions - they have no choice but to say “computer says no”. And some of it will be that credit systems are creaky spaghetti with errors and long-existing biases. (And, if they’re using machine learning systems to make credit decisions, it’s possible that *no-one* knows. You might not know how your AI black box makes decisions because the whole point of using machine learning is when you’re not sure which data is going to be relevant.)

Related: many interesting things to read about (the long history of) algorithmic bias in this thread on Twitter.

Self-driving safety

A self-driving Uber car that killed a pedestrian in 2018 “wasn’t programmed” to look for pedestrians other than at crossings. This seems a Bad Thing doesn’t it?: a car that partially self-drives should look *everywhere* for soft, delicate humans.

Some Bloomberg research found that 28% of Tesla Model 3 owners said Autopilot had saved them from a dangerous situation, while 13% said the feature had put them in one. So we know that Autopilot makes Tesla owners feel safer, ish. But the owners probably aren’t the ones who could get hit by a Tesla! They should survey people that aren’t owners of Teslas, like other drivers, or people that take public transport, or... pedestrians.

How someone perceives safety is not the same as actual safety, so it would be better to have stats on the actual safety. Tesla says its cars are safer than human drivers, and maybe that’s correct. But another thing about perception is that society probably won’t be comfortable widely adopting self-driving vehicles until they feel (and The Safety People prove) the cars are 10 times safer: 73% of respondents to an SAE International survey “preferred to share control with their vehicle, the survey found [...] Consumers are generally enthusiastic about self-driving cars, SAE says, but expect them to be a safer experience than human-driven cars.”

Other news

Google's Paper Phone is an experiment in digital detox - “The whole premise should be absolutely insufferable. Instead, it’s a surprisingly convincing demonstration of how well the information we all feel that we need our phone to access can so easily be decoupled from the addiction-device.”

How algorithms influence British politics.

People are just now receiving delayed texts from February - happy valentines day!

“The chat app you can only use when you have less than 5% battery.”

Previous newsletters:

Most opened newsletter in the last month: Uber buys grocery delivery co. Most clicked story: Workshop Tactics kit.

News 1 year ago: Convenience stores as coffee shops, and free coffee shops (pay with your data).

News 2 years ago: All the way to your fridge.

[joshoyokai-blog]

streaming hack for amazon fire stick kodi - hack quantum amazon

streaming hack for amazon fire stick kodi - hack quantum amazon

amazon appstore region hackAmazon's technology[edit]*Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Information Management (IM) support Amazon 19s business strategy. The core technology that keeps Amazon running is Linux-based. As of 2005, Amazon had the world 19s three largest Linux databases, with capacities of 7.8 TB, 18.5 TB, and 24.7 TB. The central data warehouse of Amazon is made of 28 Hewlett Packard Enterprise servers with four CPUs per node running Oracle database software. Amazon 19s technology architecture handles millions of back-end operations every day, as well as queries from more than half a million third-party sellers. With hundreds of thousands of people sending their credit card numbers to Amazon 19s servers every day, security becomes a major concern. Amazon employs Netscape Secure Commerce Server using the Secure Socket Layer protocol which stores all credit card details in a separate database. The company also records data on customer buyer behavior which enables them to offer or recommend to an individual specific item, or bundles of items based upon preferences demonstrated through purchases or items visited.[88]**On January 31, 2013 Amazon experienced an outage that lasted approximately 49 minutes, leaving its site inaccessible to some customers.[89]**On May 5, 2014 Amazon unveiled a partnership with Twitter. Twitter users can link their accounts to an Amazon account and automatically add items to their shopping carts by responding to any tweet with an Amazon product link bearing the hashtag #AmazonCart. Customers never leave the Twitter feed, and the product is waiting for them when they go to the Amazon website.Because of this surge, Abell said, he 19d just spent five days coming up with a plan that called for more planes, extra package handlers, and double shifts at UPS 19s gargantuan Worldport sorting center in Louisville. Abell wouldn 19t name the vexing customer. But Jay Dennis, communications director for Teamsters Local 89, which represents Worldport workers, later told me it was Amazon. Even so, in December, UPS was swamped with Amazon packages and struggled to meet its deadlines. So was FedEx. Amazon made no secret of its displeasure. 1CAmazon fulfillment centers processed and tendered customer orders to delivery carriers in time for holiday delivery, 1D an Amazon spokeswoman said at the time.** 1CPeople blamed UPS, 1D says Robert Lieb, a professor of supply chain management at Northeastern University. 1CBut the reality of the situation was Amazon dumped significantly more volume on UPS on Dec. 23 than they had agreed to give them. I mean, you can 19t go out and lease more planes the day before Christmas, and you can 19t put additional workers on. 1D Amazon and UPS prefer not to discuss the incident, but Steve Gaut, a UPS spokesman, says his company worked out a system so that it has more 1Cvisibility 1D into its customers 19 holiday loads.*Either way, Amazon accelerated its effort to avoid any more holiday snafus. By the end of 2014, it had 23 sorting centers in the U.S. 1CA blitz is the way to describe it, 1D says Ben Conwell, a former Amazon real estate executive involved in the construction spree. 1CThose buildings couldn 19t open fast enough. 1D The same year, Amazon launched Prime Now in New York, with couriers who drove cars, rode bikes, and took public transportation. 1CThey have people riding the subway in New York with carts loaded up with Amazon boxes, 1D says Marc Wulfraat, founder of MWPVL, the supply chain consultant. 1CThey use students, hustlers, people who are just trying to make a buck. 1D Amazon has since extended Prime Now to more than 40 cities. The service 19s most popular items are bottled water and toilet paper, though the company also recently said it had delivered 300,000 condoms since Prime Now 19s debut. Try calling FedEx next time your bedside drawer is empty.E-commerce giant Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has denied reports that its servers were recently hacked. The suspected hacker leaked the records of 80,000 Amazon customers. The data is believed to have been taken from an Amazon Kindle server.**The company said that the data didn 19t come from their servers, & no 1Chack 1D was staged. They said 1CWe have confirmed that this information did not come from Amazon 19s servers, and that the accounts in question are not legitimate Amazon customer accounts. 1D*Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) Hack Reported a Few Days Ago**The Daily Dot reported that a potential hack on Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) may have occurred in an article published on the 08/07/2016. The article read 1CA hacker claiming to have breached an Amazon server has released more than 80,000 u Subscribe and More Hack:

[hightechlogistics]

Running a warehouse is nothing short of challenging. With a lot of things coming and moving out, it creates a major logistical task. To ensure efficient working of your warehouse in New York, here are a few tips that should be followed. Summon your planning skills, skill managing abilities, and foresight to ensure that the warehouse runs efficiently. These tips will surely help in this regard.

[brajeshupadhyay]

Wall Street Shakes Off Grim Economic News

Wall Street rebounds from its steepest plunge since March.

Stocks on Wall Street rose Friday, rebounding from their steepest drop in months, in a day of unsteady trading.

The S&P 500 closed more than 1 percent higher, after earlier having climbed more than 3 percent. On Thursday, the index plunged by about 6 percent, its sharpest drop since mid-March.

Financial markets are suffering from a shift in sentiment this week, as investors have seemed to acknowledge the risks to the economy from pandemic-related shutdowns earlier this year and the prospect of a second-wave of coronavirus infections as government’s lift restrictions on activity, The New York Times’s Matt Phillips reports.

Confidence in a quick recovery and return to normal was rattled after the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, warned that the depth of the downturn and pace of the recovery remained “extraordinarily uncertain.”

The central bank repeated that warning on Friday. In a semiannual monetary policy report to Congress, its first since the pandemic took hold, the Fed said the nation’s gross domestic product would probably contract “at a rapid pace” in the second quarter after “tumbling” in the first.

“Chairman Powell threw a bucket of cold water on the thought that the economy is going to go back to where it was in 2019 any time soon,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, an asset management firm.

Analysts like Mr. Maley have also noted that the market was overdue a pullback, after a staggering rally — a gain of as much as 45 percent for the S&P 500 from March lows — had left stock prices somewhat disconnected from reality.

It was the fastest recovery off a market low for the benchmark index since 1933, and came even as tens of millions of Americans applied for unemployment benefits and the national unemployment rate surged to its highest level since the Great Depression.

Also worrying investors is data from some states that have eased quarantine restrictions, such as Texas and Arizona that shows a resurgence of the virus in those states.

“The idea that Covid is fully behind us, or that a V-shaped recovery is in front of us, were put on hold” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers in Greenwich, Conn.

Even if the rise in cases doesn’t lead to another large-scale lockdown, analysts say it does dash hopes for a return to a more normal environment over the summer and makes a full rebound in particularly exposed industries less likely.

A judge allows Hertz to sell new stock during bankruptcy proceedings.

A bankruptcy court judge on Friday allowed Hertz to sell up to $1 billion in new stock, granting the car rental agency’s request as investors improbably bought up shares in recent days.

“The recent market prices of and the trading volumes in Hertz’s common stock potentially present a unique opportunity,” lawyers for the company argued in a bankruptcy court hearing on Thursday.

The judge, Mary F. Walrath of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, agreed, saying in her ruling that the stock sale “is in the best interests” of Hertz and its creditors.

The company’s stock price ended the day Friday at $2.83 per share, up from a low of 40 cents after it filed for bankruptcy last month. The stock briefly climbed above $5.50 on Monday, its highest level since mid-April.

Hertz did not immediately respond on Friday to a request for comment on when and whether it would proceed with such a sale.

The move is exceedingly rare for a bankrupt company, the DealBook newsletter notes, because most bankruptcy restructurings result in stockholders — who are last in line to recover financial assets — being wiped out. There are also precedents for investors coming out ahead. The hedge fund mogul William A. Ackman made a fortune from owning stock in the bankrupt real estate business General Growth Properties nearly a decade ago.

But in a sign of Hertz’s dire financial straits, the company has asked for permission to end leases for more than 144,000 vehicles that it says it can no longer afford.

Pushing fashion, Amazon opened a photo studio as a ‘warehouse’ exemption.

A large Amazon fashion photo studio in Brooklyn, where models pose in clothing sold on the company’s site, sat shuttered for more than two months as the coronavirus spread in New York.

Then, on May 18, Amazon reopened the studio and later began taking photos with models. It told employees on conference calls that the studio, in the Williamsburg neighborhood, could open under state rules that allowed warehouses and fulfillment operations to operate as essential businesses.

There was just one problem: It appears that Amazon was playing fast and loose with the rules.

A few days after The Times asked the state about the open studio, Amazon closed it. A manager told employees that someone in state government had given the company a heads-up that it may need to comply with an unspecified new policy. The studio remains closed.

Reopening the studio shows how Amazon has pressed ahead during the pandemic, looking to right its operations quickly after the virus initially caught it on its heels. The push to take advantage of its warehousing operations, when physical retailers were closed, was particularly evident in areas where it has long struggled, like high-end fashion.

Wealth advisers are divided over taking aid meant for small businesses.

The federal government’s multibillion-dollar aid program to help small businesses hurt by the pandemic prompted outrage after billions went to public companies while mom-and-pop businesses were sidelined.

Now, another group of recipients is being scrutinized for taking the money: independent wealth management firms, some of which manage billions of dollars on behalf of affluent Americans. Their fees, which are typically 1 percent, can bring in tens of million annually regardless of market fluctuations.

The initial $349 billion allocated in April for the Paycheck Protection Program went quickly, prompting Congress to approve an additional $310 billion. But some business owners found the guidelines for accepting the money confusing or too restrictive.

Now, a divide is growing between advisory firms that took the money and those that declined because of ethical concerns. The issue is more than a tempest in a teapot. Some firms could lose millions in fees if their clients start pulling their wealth out.

“We didn’t think it was very credible that these firms actually needed the money,” said Gary Ribe, the chief investment officer of Accretive Wealth Partners, which manages $130 million and did not apply a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program. “Getting it out of an abundance of caution — that didn’t seem credible, either.”

The Fed describes a grim and risky pandemic-era economy.

The Federal Reserve painted a sober picture of the economy in its semiannual monetary policy report to Congress, highlighting risks to the financial system and emphasizing that pandemic-induced job losses were hitting lower-income workers and minorities especially hard.

“Real gross domestic product will contract at a rapid pace in the second quarter after tumbling at an annual rate of 5 percent in the first quarter of 2020,” the Fed said in its report, released Friday. It noted that the most “severe” job losses had been sustained by workers with lower incomes, and said that borrowing conditions remained tight for households and businesses with weaker credit histories.

The Fed also suggested that the pandemic was probably costing workers more than their jobs: Those who were still in the labor market were seeing weak pay growth.

“In the months ahead, labor market prospects for the unemployed and underemployed — both overall and for particularly hard-hit groups of workers — will largely depend on the course of the Covid-19 outbreak itself and on actions taken to halt its spread,” according to the report to Congress.

Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, will testify before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday and the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.

Britain’s economic output fell by one-fifth in April, a record amount.

The British economy shrank by 20.3 percent in April compared with the month before, a record contraction that indicated devastation in many parts of the economy.

Updated June 12, 2020

What’s the risk of catching coronavirus from a surface?

Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus — whether it’s surface transmission or close human contact — is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?

So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.

How does blood type influence coronavirus?

A study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Having Type A blood was linked to a 50 percent increase in the likelihood that a patient would need to get oxygen or to go on a ventilator, according to the new study.

How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nation’s job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.

Will protests set off a second viral wave of coronavirus?

Mass protests against police brutality that have brought thousands of people onto the streets in cities across America are raising the specter of new coronavirus outbreaks, prompting political leaders, physicians and public health experts to warn that the crowds could cause a surge in cases. While many political leaders affirmed the right of protesters to express themselves, they urged the demonstrators to wear face masks and maintain social distancing, both to protect themselves and to prevent further community spread of the virus. Some infectious disease experts were reassured by the fact that the protests were held outdoors, saying the open air settings could mitigate the risk of transmission.

How do we start exercising again without hurting ourselves after months of lockdown?

Exercise researchers and physicians have some blunt advice for those of us aiming to return to regular exercise now: Start slowly and then rev up your workouts, also slowly. American adults tended to be about 12 percent less active after the stay-at-home mandates began in March than they were in January. But there are steps you can take to ease your way back into regular exercise safely. First, “start at no more than 50 percent of the exercise you were doing before Covid,” says Dr. Monica Rho, the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. Thread in some preparatory squats, too, she advises. “When you haven’t been exercising, you lose muscle mass.” Expect some muscle twinges after these preliminary, post-lockdown sessions, especially a day or two later. But sudden or increasing pain during exercise is a clarion call to stop and return home.

My state is reopening. Is it safe to go out?

States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you aren’t being told to stay at home, it’s still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.

What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

How can I protect myself while flying?

If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

Should I wear a mask?

The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people don’t need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks don’t replace hand washing and social distancing.

What should I do if I feel sick?

If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

The data reflects the first full month of Britain’s lockdown to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, and is likely to increase pressure to relax those rules more quickly.

Manufacturing fell by 24.3 percent, led by a 90 percent fall in the sector that includes motor vehicles, according to the Office of National Statistics.

In March, British economic output contracted by 5.8 percent.

The drop in the G.D.P. in April was the biggest Britain had ever seen and nearly 10 times worse than the steepest pre-coronavirus fall, said Jonathan Athow, the government’s deputy national statistician.

“Virtually all areas of the economy were hit, with pubs, education, health and car sales all giving the biggest contributions to this historic fall,” he said in a news release.

Earlier this week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development projected that the British economy would contract by 12.5 percent in 2020, worsening to 14 percent if there were a second wave of infections.

In Europe, ‘corona cycleways’ are becoming the new post-confinement commute.

As France eased its coronavirus lockdowns last month, a small army of street workers fanned out across Paris in the dark of night. They dropped traffic barriers along car lanes and painted yellow bicycle symbols onto the asphalt. By morning, miles of pop-up “corona cycleways” had been laid, teeming with people heading back to work.

As European cities emerge from quarantines, bicycles are playing a central role in getting the work force moving again. Governments are trying to revive their economies from a deep recession, but cannot fully rely on public transportation to get workers to their jobs because of the need for social distancing. In urban areas at least, bicycles are suddenly an unlikely component to restarting economic growth.

In Europe, where many cities have integrated cycling as a mode of transportation, the pandemic is speeding up an ecological transition to limit car traffic and cut pollution, especially as new research draws links between dirty air and coronavirus death rates.

Britain, France, Italy and their neighbors are accelerating hundreds of millions of euros in investments on new biking infrastructure and schemes to get people pedaling.

“This crisis has made clear that we need to change the way we live, work and move,” said Morten Kabell, chief executive of the European Cyclists’ Federation. “In the era of social distancing, people are wary of using public transportation, and cities can’t take more cars. So they are looking to the bike as a natural mode of mobility for the future.”

Airlines sue to stop Britain’s quarantine on arriving passengers.

Three of the largest airlines operating from Britain have filed a legal challenge to the 14-day quarantine imposed by the British government on Monday on many travelers arriving in the country. According to a statement, British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair want a “judicial review” of the measures, which are intended to reduce importation of the coronavirus into Britain, as soon as possible.

The airlines said that the quarantine, which carries heavy fines for those who break the rules, would “have a devastating effect on British tourism and the wider economy and destroy thousands of jobs.” The airlines also said that the government had provided no scientific evidence that such a severe policy was warranted.

As in many countries, Britain’s lockdown has severely curtailed air travel, putting huge financial pressure on airlines, some of which have estimated that air travel won’t return to previous levels for two to three years. The quarantine has been imposed as the government is beginning to ease other parts of the lockdown, including rules on which shops can open.

The government has argued that as the virus comes under control, a quarantine will help stem imported cases.

Airline executives have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of the British government. Ryanair’s chief, Michael O’Leary, rejected the government’s recommendations that passengers check as much baggage as possible to help prevent transmission of the virus.

In an interview with the news outlet The Independent, Mr. O’Leary termed the advice “more rubbish,” and said it was much safer for passengers to keep their bags rather than turn them over to baggage handlers.

Catch up: Here’s what else is happening.

Lululemon, the premium athleisure brand, said on Thursday that its sales in the first quarter fell 17 percent to $652 million, showing that not even makers of comfortable, stretchy clothing have been spared during the pandemic. The company said that as of June 10, 295 of its 489 stores had reopened, and that e-commerce sales made up more than half of its first quarter revenue, compared with 27 percent in the same period last year. Still, unlike most other retailers, it managed to post a profit of $28.6 million.

Boeing has asked a major supplier of parts for its troubled 737 Max jet to stop work on four Max fuselages and not to start work on 16 more, which were planned for delivery this year, according to the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems. Based on that request and further correspondence with Boeing, Spirit said it expected to cut back work it had planned on 125 of the jets and would furlough some employees on the project for three weeks starting Monday.

Reporting was contributed by Karen Weise, Vanessa Friedman, Paul Sulivan, Gregory Schmidt, Stanley Reed, Mohammed Hadi, Michael J. de la Merced, Alan Rappeport, Kevin Granville, Sapna Maheshwari, Liz Alderman, Kate Conger, Paul Mozur, Carlos Tejada, Michael Ives and Niraj Chokshi.

The post Wall Street Shakes Off Grim Economic News appeared first on Sansaar Times.

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[jobsearchtips02]

Inside Amazon’s strategy to check storage facility workers for Covid-19 every 2 weeks

An Amazon employee prepares a hand-washing station in a warehouse throughout coronavirus pandemic

Amazon

Amazon is ramping up its strategies to test its fulfillment center employees for coronavirus after several outbreaks at its storage facilities.

The goal, according to three people familiar with the business’s strategies, is to check the bulk of the business’s warehouse employees every two weeks. Workers would test themselves with nasal swabs, using a video for assistance, with a clinical professional monitoring.

The relocation would need Amazon to roll out countless tests throughout the summertime. That’s in line with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ declaration in April, when he informed shareholders that he hoped the company would soon begin “routine screening of all Amazonians, consisting of those revealing no signs.”

The people who talked to CNBC asked not to be named talking about internal business matters.

Amazon has actually already increase its screening of warehouse employees following break outs of Covid-19 in New York City, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Oregon, among other states. By increase Covid-19 testing, it is wishing to stem the spread of the infection prior to it leaves control. The business formerly said it would invest its expected Q2 earnings of $4 billion into its Covid-19 action, and will invest $ 1 billion on screening throughout the year.

In addition to gathering nasal swabs, the company is planning to develop standalone diagnostic labs in several websites, starting off in Sunnyvale, California, and in Kentucky, the people stated. These labs would evaluate some of the samples to see if they’re positive or negative. Medical diagnostics has actually long been an area of interest for Amazon.

An Amazon representative validated to CNBC that the company has actually introduced a screening pilot program at a handful of fulfillment centers. The business declined to reveal which centers have released testing sites up until now. It also decreased to talk about whether it prepares to evaluate corporate employees for the coronavirus.

” We have actually begun our very first small-scale testing pilot,” an Amazon representative told CNBC. “We do not understand exactly yet how it’s going to form up, but we continue to believe it deserves trying.”

To aid the process, Amazon has actually constructed a devoted team that’s working to establish coronavirus testing capability. The group is made up of research study scientists, program managers, procurement experts and software engineers– all essential personnel for constructing out new labs.

That group seems growing. Amazon’s hardware group Lab126, based in Sunnyvale, California, is employing three extra research scientists in diagnostics to help scale its testing efforts, according to current job postings Laboratory126 is likewise hiring several lab assistants, engineers and researchers in Hebron, Kentucky.

Some of the crucial Amazon workers getting involved on calls with external partners about the job include Douglas Wiebel, a scientist and engineer who has been at the business for almost six years; Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist hired to Amazon Care; Matt Wood, a general supervisor of expert system at Amazon AWS; and Taha Kass Hout, a former government health authorities likewise working for AWS.

The business is likewise looking at other mechanisms to evaluate workers beyond nasal swabs. It’s checking out pulse oximetry screening, which determines oxygen levels in the blood, according to two of the people. Pulse oximeters, which are small devices that fit onto the fingertip, are presumed by some scientists to determine a subgroup of patients with breathing symptoms. The business is likewise checking out more routine temperature checks.

Amazon has not revealed its strategies openly, however has actually sought advice from scholastic centers and other groups about the scope of the task.

Grand Rounds handling consultations for favorable workers

The Amazon workers who evaluate favorable or experience signs are referred to a company called Grand Beats, a venture-backed start-up that provides online medical consultations. During those consultations, a doctor walks the employee through the threats and tells them to stay at home or look for followup care. Those who check unfavorable do not typically speak with a Grand Rounds agent, however the business has actually told satisfaction center employees that its service is offered to answer questions about the virus.

Amazon is contracting with a 3rd party due to the fact that laws prevent corporations from practicing medicine or employing a doctor to supply professional medical services.

The Amazon employees who check positive or experience symptoms are referred to a business called Grand Beats, a venture-backed start-up that offers online medical assessments.

Grand Beats can also supply Amazon employees with the proper documents needed to be authorized for two weeks of paid quarantine leave (their own medical professionals can likewise assist with that). Amazon in March informed staff members it would supply them with approximately 2 weeks of paid authorized leave if they reveal signs, have the infection or are in quarantine. Despite this, multiple Amazon workers informed CNBC they received no pay or were given 60%of their typical income, even though they satisfied the requirements for paid sick leave.

The Grand Beats service is primarily marketed to fulfillment center employees through their intranet, called AtoZ. Workers can access an online website, download the Grand Beats app or call a 1-800 number to access Covid-19 resources and check their signs if they feel they might have been exposed to the infection. CNBC called the 1-800 number offered to staff members and a tape-recorded message said it was the “Amazon worker line of Grand Rounds.”

An Amazon storage facility employee, who asked to remain confidential, informed CNBC that Amazon initially launched its tele-health partnership with Grand Rounds in March.

Grand Rounds has actually not divulged its relationship with Amazon, but the business has been working with medical workers in sites that overlap with Amazon’s warehouse facilities, including in Reno, Nevada, and Lewiston, Maine.

The Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the business started its collaboration with Grand Beats in March. Grand Rounds declined to comment.

With screening advancement underway, Amazon has included new measures to keep warehouse workers safe, like temperature checks, necessary individual protective equipment and increased deep cleansings. Regardless of this, the business faces growing calls from storage facility employees, political leaders and state attorneys general to do more to safeguard workers from the coronavirus. Critics argue the company should broaden its paid sick leave policies and close warehouses for cleaning when there are favorable cases, to name a few demands.

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from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/inside-amazons-strategy-to-check-storage-facility-workers-for-covid-19-every-2-weeks/

[un-enfant-immature]

Fabric raises $110 million Series B to expand its network of automated fulfillment centers in the U.S.

Fabric, the startup that wants to make automated logistics available to retailers of all sizes, announced today it has raised $110 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Corner Ventures, with participation from Aleph, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Innovation Endeavors, La Maison, Playground Ventures and Temasek.

This brings the total funding raised so far by Fabric (formerly called CommonSense Robotics) to $136 million. Its last round was a $20 million Series A announced in February 2018. Fabric also said today that it is launching a platform model that will allow its clients to build micro-fulfillment centers on their own property that use the startup’s AI and robotics-based technology.

Fabric was founded in Tel Aviv in 2015 and is now headquartered in New York. Its Series B will be used for its U.S. expansion, where it currently has 14 sites under contract, including three micro-fulfillment centers that are currently being built in New York City. One of those is scheduled to open by the first quarter of next year and will be available to retailers who want to make on-demand fulfillment, including one-hour deliveries, available to their customers.

Last October, Fabric opened its first micro-fulfillment center in Tel Aviv, giving an inside look into how the company’s system works. Robots move around the warehouse, picking up inventory so human workers can stay at a scanning station. Fabric says the 6,000 square feet station now processes up to 600 orders a day, including one-hour deliveries.

Steve Hornyak, chief commercial officer at Fabric, told TechCrunch that it plans to expand its platform model into at least one other U.S. city next year and currently has deals with several U.S. retailers that will be announced in the coming months.

Fabric’s logistics platform can be used by retailers of any size, but “for SMBs, our service model is particularly revolutionary as it has been built to allow for multiple tenants leveraging the same platform. It enables retailers that don’t have the resources or infrastructure to build an entirely new fulfillment operation themselves to access a world-class logistics solution that enables profitable on-demand fulfillment,” he said.

Of course, retailers and logistics providers in the U.S. have to deal with the specter of Amazon, which Hornyak said Fabric views “as the force that’s fundamentally driving the market, transforming retail as we know it at a dizzying pace and pushing all other players to adapt in a rapidly evolving space.”

“When Amazon announces it’s providing free same-day deliveries of $1 items, that becomes the consumer expectation—and the faster the delivery, the more complicated and expensive it is,” he added. “Our aim is to enable all other retailers to stay relevant and competitive in this world that Amazon has created, providing the operational, strategic and financial infrastructure they need to meet consumer expectations profitably, sustainably, and at scale in an on-demand world.”

As part of its expansion plans, Fabric plans to grow its commercial, operations and tech support teams in the U.S., as well as its engineering team in Tel Aviv.

In a press statement, Corner Ventures managing partner John Cadeddu said “Fabric is the micro-fulfillment market leader with a production-proven platform that drives tremendous value for its retail partners and consumers alike. We are delighted to be partnering with the Fabric team in their incredible vision to reinvent how goods are fulfilled and delivered in this on-demand world, ultimately empowering retailers to provide faster deliveries at lower costs and at scale.”

[deniscollins]

1.5 Million Packages a Day: The Internet Brings Chaos to N.Y. Streets

In New York City, more than 1.5 million packages are delivered daily, resulting in  gridlock, roadway safety and pollution. Delivery trucks operated by UPS and FedEx double-park on streets and block bus and bike lanes racked up more than 471,000 parking violations last year, a 34 percent increase from 2013. If you were a New York City adviser, what would you recommend to address this worsening problem? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

An Amazon order starts with a tap of a finger. Two days later — or even in a matter of hours — the package arrives.

It seems simple enough.

But to deliver Amazon orders and countless others from businesses that sell over the internet, the very fabric of major urban areas around the world is being transformed. And New York City, where more than 1.5 million packages are delivered daily, shows the impact that this push for convenience is having on gridlock, roadway safety and pollution.

Delivery trucks operated by UPS and FedEx double-park on streets and block bus and bike lanes. They racked up more than 471,000 parking violations last year, a 34 percent increase from 2013.

The main entryway for packages into New York City, leading to the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey, has become the most congested interchange in the country. Trucks heading toward the bridge travel at 23 miles per hour, down from 30 m.p.h. five years ago.

While the rise of ride-hailing services like Uber has unquestionably caused more traffic, the proliferation of trucks has worsened the problem. As a result, cars in the busiest parts of Manhattan now move just above a jogger’s pace, about 7 m.p.h., roughly 23 percent slower than at the beginning of the decade.

Neighborhoods like Red Hook, Brooklyn, are being used as logistics hubs to get packages to customers faster than ever. At least two million square feet of warehouse space is being built in New York, including what will be the largest center of its kind in the country. Amazon added two warehouses in the city over the summer.

The immense changes in New York have been driven by tech giants, other private businesses and, increasingly, by independent couriers, often without the city’s involvement, oversight or even its awareness, The New York Times found.

Officials are racing to keep track of the numerous warehouses sprouting up, to create more zones for trucks to unload and to encourage some deliveries to be made by boat as the city struggles to cope with a booming online economy.

The average number of daily deliveries to households in New York City tripled to more than 1.1 million shipments from 2009 to 2017, the latest year for which data was available, according to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center of Excellence for Sustainable Urban Freight Systems.

“It is impossible to triple the amount,” said José Holguín-Veras, the center’s director and an engineering professor at Rensselaer, “without paying consequences.”

Households now receive more shipments than businesses, pushing trucks into neighborhoods where they had rarely ventured.

And it could be just the beginning. Just 10 percent of all retail transactions in the United States during the first quarter of 2019 were made online, up from 4 percent a decade ago, according to the Census Bureau.

Amazon is now moving toward one-day delivery rather than two days for its Prime customers and plans to spend $1.5 billion this quarter, which includes the holiday season, to reach that goal.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on the impact of its deliveries on growing congestion in New York.

Other companies, including FedEx and UPS, said they were using technology and taking other measures to make deliveries less burdensome on clogged streets.

New York City officials say they have taken steps to better manage truck traffic on the streets.

“In this period of tremendous growth in the city’s population, jobs, tourism and e-commerce, our congested streets are seeing ever more trucks,” said Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner. “The city is experimenting with enforcement and creative curb management initiatives to address this growing challenge.”

Whatever the impact on roadways, the public obviously loves internet shopping. And these services can also be especially valuable for older and disabled people who have difficulty getting to brick-and-mortar stores.

Nick Kittredge, an executive at Prologis, the largest operator of warehouses and distribution centers in the United States, said much of the recent growth had occurred because of orders for items like perishable goods and clothing.

“Same-day delivery is the true expectation, and for some, even within an hour or two-hour time frame,” Mr. Kittredge said.

Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a professor of global studies and geography at Hofstra University, said the changes on New York City’s streets underscored the trade-offs created by the internet economy.

“People love convenience, but they don’t like truck traffic, congestion and air pollution,” Mr. Rodrigue said. “We’re still adapting to it. It’s going to be a painful adaptation, but we have no choice.”

Trucks, trucks and more trucks

As the delivery armada has ballooned, so, too, have the complaints.

Four delivery companies — FedEx, FreshDirect, Peapod and UPS — accumulated just over 515,000 summonses for parking violations in 2018, totaling $27 million in fines, according to the city. In 2013, those same companies received roughly 372,000 summonses and paid $21.8 million.

After one idling FreshDirect truck drew numerous complaints, Ben Kallos, a City Council member who represents the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said he contacted the police. It was towed away, only to have other trucks soon take its place.

“It’s kind of a game of whack-a-mole,” Mr. Kallos said. “They operate somewhere until we get complaints and then they move.”

Images and videos of delivery trucks blocking bike lanes, sidewalks and crosswalks are easy to find on social media. In some neighborhoods, Amazon’s ubiquitous boxes are stacked and sorted on the sidewalk, sometimes on top of coverings spread out like picnic blankets.

“They are using public space as their private warehouse,” said Christine Berthet, who lives in Midtown Manhattan. “That is not acceptable. That is not what the sidewalk is for.”

The total number of trucks on tolled crossings into New York City and within the five boroughs rose about 9.4 percent in 2018, to an estimated 35.7 million, from 32.6 million in 2013, according to transit data.

That increase in traffic has made the interchange of Interstate 95 and New Jersey Route 4, about a half-mile from the George Washington Bridge, the country’s most gridlocked stretch of highway for trucks, according to the American Transportation Research Institute.

“There is just not enough room for all the trucks that need to make deliveries, the cars that need to get past them and the people who live here,” Mr. Kallos said.

Trucks are also contributing to greenhouse gas emissions at a time when New York City is rushing to significantly reduce the release of heat-trapping gases.

From 1990 to 2017, carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles and trucks in the New York City area grew by 27 percent, making the region the largest contributor of driving-related carbon dioxide emissions in the country.

Online and delivery companies acknowledged the increased congestion, but emphasized that they play a vital role in the local economy and are seeking to reduce their footprint.

UPS has reduced the number of trucks on city streets by consolidating packages based on scheduled delivery times and destinations, and has equipped drivers with technology to choose the most direct routes, according to Leo Gonzalez, a UPS official who testified at a city hearing this year.

Still, drivers often cannot find legal parking because of a lack of available curbside space, especially in Manhattan, company officials said. There are not enough loading zones, and they are often taken up by idling vehicles.

“Making deliveries in urban environments poses additional challenges to any company that makes deliveries, whether it’s transportation companies like UPS or food and beverage suppliers,” Kim Krebs, a UPS spokeswoman, said.

Similarly, FedEx and FreshDirect said they were open to collaborating with cities to address the parking problem. Peapod said it regularly reviewed New York City rules with drivers to help them drive safely and avoid violations.

Jonathan Lyons, a FedEx spokesman, said, “Parking limitations in congested metropolitan areas create challenges, but we always strive to comply with local traffic regulations as we meet our daily customer service commitments.”

Warehouses move closer to homes

As the internet economy grows, so, too, does the importance of what is known as last-mile package delivery — the final step in the increasingly competitive and costly process of moving items to customers’ homes as quickly as possible.

In New York, at least five warehouses, are in the works. Over the summer, Amazon opened a last-mile warehouse in the Bronx and another in Queens. It has also looked at leasing additional facilities for last-mile deliveries in Brooklyn.

The push to place warehouses closer to shoppers is an enormous shift. For years, retailers and e-commerce companies have largely served New York City from warehouses in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania and industrial parks in northern New Jersey.

They emerged during the age of the Sears and J.C. Penney shopping catalogs and continued to thrive in the early days of online shopping, when five- to seven-day delivery times were the norm. Even today, many same-day or overnight deliveries follow that route, crossing into New York via bridges and tunnels.

Still, “it became apparent that if New York City is going to be a competitive city in the world economy, it’s going to need logistics fulfillment centers as close to the consumer as possible,” said Dov Hertz of DH Property Holdings, a real estate development company with plans for three last-mile warehouses in Brooklyn.

DH Property Holdings broke ground in the summer on a three-story warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with individual ramps for trucks to reach separate floors, a vertical design that would be the second such warehouse to be built in the United States.

Another multistory warehouse, planned on 18 acres in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is expected to be the country’s largest last-mile warehouse, Mr. Hertz said.

Their warehouses in Red Hook, as well as a multistory warehouse to be built in the South Bronx, are going up in Opportunity Zones, which were created as part of the 2017 tax law and offer significant tax benefits to projects in economically distressed areas.

The program has been criticized for giving tax breaks to wealthy people who invest in the zones, while not significantly helping struggling neighborhoods.

Developers of these warehouses have pledged to create thousands of jobs and reduce the wave of delivery trucks entering New York City.

But the plans have set off worries about potential health effects in the largely working-class areas targeted for last-mile warehouses. The South Bronx, which already is home to many warehouses, has some of the highest asthma rates in the country.

Rafael Salamanca Jr., a City Council member whose district includes the South Bronx, said he had mixed feelings about the area becoming a warehouse hub. While warehouses have provided jobs, and pledges from Amazon to hire local residents, they have also increased the number of diesel-spewing trucks on the roads.

“There are 15,000 trucks daily in and out of the Hunts Point community,” Mr. Salamanca said, referring to a section of the South Bronx that is home to one of the nation’s largest food distribution centers.

The developers of the warehouses say they are trying to address environmental concerns.

Andrew Chung, the chief executive of Innovo Property Group, which is building the multistory warehouse in the South Bronx, said the distribution center would have electric charging stations with the goal of eventually shifting to a mostly electric delivery fleet.

“In two to three years, everything is going to be electric, all the delivery vans and most of the trucks,” he said. “It makes sense and it’s environmentally conscious.”

Buildings field blizzards of packages

New York has long been a vertical city, but many of its buildings were designed to accommodate envelopes, not a daily torrent of boxes.

These days, buildings have been forced to become mini logistical centers.

At one Midtown Manhattan condominium, the first wave of about 100 packages a day arrives by 9 a.m. and the deliveries do not let up until night. Each one is checked in and placed in a storage room, and an email alert is sent to the resident. Another email confirms when the package is picked up.

A large complex in Manhattan had to turn a nearby retail storefront into a satellite package center. Stickers are left on building mailboxes notifying residents of a package, but some residents complain that the stickers fall off or get pulled off and packages go missing.

Other buildings without storage space resort to piling boxes in their lobbies. One Brooklyn building kept packages in a locked cage with the doorman guarding the key. A Manhattan building facing Central Park placed two plastic shelving units in the entryway to store residents’ packages, but boxes still spill over onto the floor.

About 15 percent of New York City households receive a package every day, according to the Sustainable Urban Freight Systems center at Rensselaer. That means a complex with 800 apartments would get roughly 120 packages daily.

“What percent of your deliveries are truly urgent — 5 percent or 2 percent?” said Mr. Holguín-Veras, the Rensselaer professor. “We as customers are driving the process and to some extent creating these complications.”

Last year, a study comparing online shopping habits in Manhattan and Paris — two large metropolises grappling with the consequences of the e-commerce boom — found that New Yorkers out-ordered Parisians. Nearly three-quarters of the Manhattan residents surveyed had shopped for groceries online compared with just over half of Parisians.

More New Yorkers were also willing to pay extra to get their items faster.

“It’s now cheaper and easier to order anything online than it is to go to the store,” said Sarah Kaufman, associate director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University, who worked on the study.

How cities are coping with the deluge

In Paris, freight trucks enter the city at night and deliver packages to smaller warehouses near homes. In the morning, bikes and electric vans haul them to people’s doorsteps. Some neighborhood convenience stores and flower shops double as pickup spots for packages.

In Hamburg, Germany, trucks deliver containers full of packages to a drop-off site. From there, fleets of electric tricycles carry the packages to homes. UPS uses electric delivery vans in London.

New York has sought to shift more truck deliveries to nights and weekends, when streets are emptier. About 500 companies, including pharmacies and grocery stores, deliver goods from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., under a voluntary city program.

Other cities have followed suit, such as São Paulo, Brazil, and have found that nighttime deliveries speed up unloading times and reduce congestion and pollution.

Over the summer, New York City introduced a pilot program in residential areas to try to reduce double-parking by turning curbside parking spots into temporary neighborhood loading zones from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays.

Transportation officials have expanded loading zones in commercial areas in recent years, creating about 2,300 new zones around the city last year. This month, officials gave trucks and buses priority on a major crosstown artery.

The city is also investing $100 million to divert more freight to the water and rail lines, and to entice shippers to use marine terminals and waterways to bring in goods.

The city’s efforts were a good start, Ms. Kaufman of New York University said, adding that much more needs to be done to keep up with a soaring online economy that is straining the roadways and delivery systems.

More far-reaching measures were needed, she said, such as applying additional charges for same-day deliveries and even creating a system of “congestion pricing for online deliveries,” in which large apartment or office buildings would have designated delivery days. To get packages sooner, residents and companies would have to pay extra.

“We’ve entered an entirely new way of buying goods and services, but our infrastructure is only adapting incrementally,” Ms. Kaufman said. “We need to completely rethink how we use our streets if we want to maintain our current shopping and delivery habits.”

[biofunmy]

1.5 Million Packages a Day: The Internet Brings Chaos to N.Y. Streets

An Amazon order starts with a tap of a finger. Two days later — or even in a matter of hours — the package arrives.

It seems simple enough.

But to deliver Amazon orders and countless others from businesses that sell over the internet, the very fabric of major urban areas around the world is being transformed. And New York City, where more than 1.5 million packages are delivered daily, shows the impact that this push for convenience is having on gridlock, roadway safety and pollution.

Delivery trucks operated by UPS and FedEx double-park on streets and block bus and bike lanes. They racked up more than 471,000 parking violations last year, a 34 percent increase from 2013.

The main entryway for packages into New York City, leading to the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey, has become the most congested interchange in the country. Trucks heading toward the bridge travel at 23 miles per hour, down from 30 m.p.h. five years ago.

While the rise of ride-hailing services like Uber has unquestionably caused more traffic, the proliferation of trucks has worsened the problem. As a result, cars in the busiest parts of Manhattan now move just above a jogger’s pace, about 7 m.p.h., roughly 23 percent slower than at the beginning of the decade.

Neighborhoods like Red Hook, Brooklyn, are being used as logistics hubs to get packages to customers faster than ever. At least two million square feet of warehouse space is being built in New York, including what will be the largest center of its kind in the country. Amazon added two warehouses in the city over the summer.

The immense changes in New York have been driven by tech giants, other private businesses and, increasingly, by independent couriers, often without the city’s involvement, oversight or even its awareness, The New York Times found.

Officials are racing to keep track of the numerous warehouses sprouting up, to create more zones for trucks to unload and to encourage some deliveries to be made by boat as the city struggles to cope with a booming online economy.

The average number of daily deliveries to households in New York City tripled to more than 1.1 million shipments from 2009 to 2017, the latest year for which data was available, according to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center of Excellence for Sustainable Urban Freight Systems.

“It is impossible to triple the amount,” said José Holguín-Veras, the center’s director and an engineering professor at Rensselaer, “without paying consequences.”

Households now receive more shipments than businesses, pushing trucks into neighborhoods where they had rarely ventured.

And it could be just the beginning. Just 10 percent of all retail transactions in the United States during the first quarter of 2019 were made online, up from 4 percent a decade ago, according to the Census Bureau.

Amazon is now moving toward one-day delivery rather than two days for its Prime customers and plans to spend $1.5 billion this quarter, which includes the holiday season, to reach that goal.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on the impact of its deliveries on growing congestion in New York.

Other companies, including FedEx and UPS, said they were using technology and taking other measures to make deliveries less burdensome on clogged streets.

New York City officials say they have taken steps to better manage truck traffic on the streets.

“In this period of tremendous growth in the city’s population, jobs, tourism and e-commerce, our congested streets are seeing ever more trucks,” said Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner. “The city is experimenting with enforcement and creative curb management initiatives to address this growing challenge.”

Whatever the impact on roadways, the public obviously loves internet shopping. And these services can also be especially valuable for older and disabled people who have difficulty getting to brick-and-mortar stores.

Nick Kittredge, an executive at Prologis, the largest operator of warehouses and distribution centers in the United States, said much of the recent growth had occurred because of orders for items like perishable goods and clothing.

“Same-day delivery is the true expectation, and for some, even within an hour or two-hour time frame,” Mr. Kittredge said.

Jean-Paul Rodrigue, a professor of global studies and geography at Hofstra University, said the changes on New York City’s streets underscored the trade-offs created by the internet economy.

“People love convenience, but they don’t like truck traffic, congestion and air pollution,” Mr. Rodrigue said. “We’re still adapting to it. It’s going to be a painful adaptation, but we have no choice.”

Trucks, trucks and more trucks

As the delivery armada has ballooned, so, too, have the complaints.

Four delivery companies — FedEx, FreshDirect, Peapod and UPS — accumulated just over 515,000 summonses for parking violations in 2018, totaling $27 million in fines, according to the city. In 2013, those same companies received roughly 372,000 summonses and paid $21.8 million.

After one idling FreshDirect truck drew numerous complaints, Ben Kallos, a City Council member who represents the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said he contacted the police. It was towed away, only to have other trucks soon take its place.

“It’s kind of a game of whack-a-mole,” Mr. Kallos said. “They operate somewhere until we get complaints and then they move.”

Images and videos of delivery trucks blocking bike lanes, sidewalks and crosswalks are easy to find on social media. In some neighborhoods, Amazon’s ubiquitous boxes are stacked and sorted on the sidewalk, sometimes on top of coverings spread out like picnic blankets.

“They are using public space as their private warehouse,” said Christine Berthet, who lives in Midtown Manhattan. “That is not acceptable. That is not what the sidewalk is for.”

The total number of trucks on tolled crossings into New York City and within the five boroughs rose about 9.4 percent in 2018, to an estimated 35.7 million, from 32.6 million in 2013, according to transit data.

That increase in traffic has made the interchange of Interstate 95 and New Jersey Route 4, about a half-mile from the George Washington Bridge, the country’s most gridlocked stretch of highway for trucks, according to the American Transportation Research Institute.

“There is just not enough room for all the trucks that need to make deliveries, the cars that need to get past them and the people who live here,” Mr. Kallos said.

Trucks are also contributing to greenhouse gas emissions at a time when New York City is rushing to significantly reduce the release of heat-trapping gases.

From 1990 to 2017, carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles and trucks in the New York City area grew by 27 percent, making the region the largest contributor of driving-related carbon dioxide emissions in the country.

Online and delivery companies acknowledged the increased congestion, but emphasized that they play a vital role in the local economy and are seeking to reduce their footprint.

UPS has reduced the number of trucks on city streets by consolidating packages based on scheduled delivery times and destinations, and has equipped drivers with technology to choose the most direct routes, according to Leo Gonzalez, a UPS official who testified at a city hearing this year.

Still, drivers often cannot find legal parking because of a lack of available curbside space, especially in Manhattan, company officials said. There are not enough loading zones, and they are often taken up by idling vehicles.

“Making deliveries in urban environments poses additional challenges to any company that makes deliveries, whether it’s transportation companies like UPS or food and beverage suppliers,” Kim Krebs, a UPS spokeswoman, said.

Similarly, FedEx and FreshDirect said they were open to collaborating with cities to address the parking problem. Peapod said it regularly reviewed New York City rules with drivers to help them drive safely and avoid violations.

Jonathan Lyons, a FedEx spokesman, said, “Parking limitations in congested metropolitan areas create challenges, but we always strive to comply with local traffic regulations as we meet our daily customer service commitments.”

Warehouses move closer to homes

As the internet economy grows, so, too, does the importance of what is known as last-mile package delivery — the final step in the increasingly competitive and costly process of moving items to customers’ homes as quickly as possible.

In New York, at least five warehouses, are in the works. Over the summer, Amazon opened a last-mile warehouse in the Bronx and another in Queens. It has also looked at leasing additional facilities for last-mile deliveries in Brooklyn.

The push to place warehouses closer to shoppers is an enormous shift. For years, retailers and e-commerce companies have largely served New York City from warehouses in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania and industrial parks in northern New Jersey.

They emerged during the age of the Sears and J.C. Penney shopping catalogs and continued to thrive in the early days of online shopping, when five- to seven-day delivery times were the norm. Even today, many same-day or overnight deliveries follow that route, crossing into New York via bridges and tunnels.

Still, “it became apparent that if New York City is going to be a competitive city in the world economy, it’s going to need logistics fulfillment centers as close to the consumer as possible,” said Dov Hertz of DH Property Holdings, a real estate development company with plans for three last-mile warehouses in Brooklyn.

DH Property Holdings broke ground in the summer on a three-story warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with individual ramps for trucks to reach separate floors, a vertical design that would be the second such warehouse to be built in the United States.

Another multistory warehouse, planned on 18 acres in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is expected to be the country’s largest last-mile warehouse, Mr. Hertz said.

Their warehouses in Red Hook, as well as a multistory warehouse to be built in the South Bronx, are going up in Opportunity Zones, which were created as part of the 2017 tax law and offer significant tax benefits to projects in economically distressed areas.

The program has been criticized for giving tax breaks to wealthy people who invest in the zones, while not significantly helping struggling neighborhoods.

Developers of these warehouses have pledged to create thousands of jobs and reduce the wave of delivery trucks entering New York City.

But the plans have set off worries about potential health effects in the largely working-class areas targeted for last-mile warehouses. The South Bronx, which already is home to many warehouses, has some of the highest asthma rates in the country.

Rafael Salamanca Jr., a City Council member whose district includes the South Bronx, said he had mixed feelings about the area becoming a warehouse hub. While warehouses have provided jobs, and pledges from Amazon to hire local residents, they have also increased the number of diesel-spewing trucks on the roads.

“There are 15,000 trucks daily in and out of the Hunts Point community,” Mr. Salamanca said, referring to a section of the South Bronx that is home to one of the nation’s largest food distribution centers.

The developers of the warehouses say they are trying to address environmental concerns.

Andrew Chung, the chief executive of Innovo Property Group, which is building the multistory warehouse in the South Bronx, said the distribution center would have electric charging stations with the goal of eventually shifting to a mostly electric delivery fleet.

“In two to three years, everything is going to be electric, all the delivery vans and most of the trucks,” he said. “It makes sense and it’s environmentally conscious.”

Buildings field blizzards of packages

New York has long been a vertical city, but many of its buildings were designed to accommodate envelopes, not a daily torrent of boxes.

These days, buildings have been forced to become mini logistical centers.

At one Midtown Manhattan condominium, the first wave of about 100 packages a day arrives by 9 a.m. and the deliveries do not let up until night. Each one is checked in and placed in a storage room, and an email alert is sent to the resident. Another email confirms when the package is picked up.

A large complex in Manhattan had to turn a nearby retail storefront into a satellite package center. Stickers are left on building mailboxes notifying residents of a package, but some residents complain that the stickers fall off or get pulled off and packages go missing.

Other buildings without storage space resort to piling boxes in their lobbies. One Brooklyn building kept packages in a locked cage with the doorman guarding the key. A Manhattan building facing Central Park placed two plastic shelving units in the entryway to store residents’ packages, but boxes still spill over onto the floor.

About 15 percent of New York City households receive a package every day, according to the Sustainable Urban Freight Systems center at Rensselaer. That means a complex with 800 apartments would get roughly 120 packages daily.

“What percent of your deliveries are truly urgent — 5 percent or 2 percent?” said Mr. Holguín-Veras, the Rensselaer professor. “We as customers are driving the process and to some extent creating these complications.”

Last year, a study comparing online shopping habits in Manhattan and Paris — two large metropolises grappling with the consequences of the e-commerce boom — found that New Yorkers out-ordered Parisians. Nearly three-quarters of the Manhattan residents surveyed had shopped for groceries online compared with just over half of Parisians.

More New Yorkers were also willing to pay extra to get their items faster.

“It’s now cheaper and easier to order anything online than it is to go to the store,” said Sarah Kaufman, associate director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University, who worked on the study.

How cities are coping with the deluge

In Paris, freight trucks enter the city at night and deliver packages to smaller warehouses near homes. In the morning, bikes and electric vans haul them to people’s doorsteps. Some neighborhood convenience stores and flower shops double as pickup spots for packages.

In Hamburg, Germany, trucks deliver containers full of packages to a drop-off site. From there, fleets of electric tricycles carry the packages to homes. UPS uses electric delivery vans in London.

New York has sought to shift more truck deliveries to nights and weekends, when streets are emptier. About 500 companies, including pharmacies and grocery stores, deliver goods from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., under a voluntary city program.

Other cities have followed suit, such as São Paulo, Brazil, and have found that nighttime deliveries speed up unloading times and reduce congestion and pollution.

Over the summer, New York City introduced a pilot program in residential areas to try to reduce double-parking by turning curbside parking spots into temporary neighborhood loading zones from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays.

Transportation officials have expanded loading zones in commercial areas in recent years, creating about 2,300 new zones around the city last year. This month, officials gave trucks and buses priority on a major crosstown artery.

The city is also investing $100 million to divert more freight to the water and rail lines, and to entice shippers to use marine terminals and waterways to bring in goods.

The city’s efforts were a good start, Ms. Kaufman of New York University said, adding that much more needs to be done to keep up with a soaring online economy that is straining the roadways and delivery systems.

More far-reaching measures were needed, she said, such as applying additional charges for same-day deliveries and even creating a system of “congestion pricing for online deliveries,” in which large apartment or office buildings would have designated delivery days. To get packages sooner, residents and companies would have to pay extra.

“We’ve entered an entirely new way of buying goods and services, but our infrastructure is only adapting incrementally,” Ms. Kaufman said. “We need to completely rethink how we use our streets if we want to maintain our current shopping and delivery habits.”

Agustin Armendariz contributed reporting.

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Ramon Tours An Amazon Fulfillment Center. Success Story of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship.

Millions of people order millions of things from Amazon.com.

It's the default "app" we use to order just about everything. One pair of socks. 3 bundles of paper towels. 50 baseballs. Whatever we want we order it from Amazon.

But there's not many people, comparatively, who've been INSIDE of an Amazon fulfillment center to see how it works. I did.

Overall it's overwhelmingly amazing to see the blend of people, robots, efficiency and overall technology.

Robots

It's absolutely amazing to see hundreds of robots, weighing about 300 lbs each, whizzing across the floor bringing plastic shelves to an Amazon associate who picks the item you order.

It's pretty neat.

Each robot is guided by bar codes on the floor. We humans read street signs and other signage, the robots read bar codes.

Beyond the robots are of course miles of conveyor belts and other automated warehousing logisitcs systems that take your package to the place it needs to be within the Amazon system.

Efficiency

From what I can gather, just about everything at Amazon is measured and squeezed for maximum efficiency.

Amazon seems to ask the question, what can we do to make this process faster, better, more profitable.

It's all about making the customer experience as great as possible while of course increasing profitability as well.

Since "everything" is tied to a sensor and observed with a camera, Amazon managers can tweak the entire logistics process in the warehouse, including the human associates, for maximum efficiency.

Technology

Of course "technology" is the underpinning of the enablement to Amazon's success. The speed in adoption of smartphones and increase mobile ordering and of course the overall evolution of ecommerce has enabled Amazon to explode as the number one retailer in America, giving Wal-Mart and other retails a major headache.

By leveraging technology, Amazon is able to rapidly scale, analyze buying trends, be ruthlessly efficient and more.

Even to go in and out of the Amazon center, there is minimal human security. The entrance and exit from the building is all badge controlled with ceiling height turn styles.

People

During our tour so much of what the tour guide shared with us was focused on how Amazon can make working at Amazon a great experience for their ASSOCIATES.

Sure, it's about the customers, but also very important to Amazon are it's associates.

It's minimal wage is $15 an hour. Sure this might have been forced on it due to social change, but it is what it is.

Within the fulfillment center it's a tedious job with lots of repetitive motion and standing all the time, for hours.

It's not a job for everyone, but it is a job for many people who need work and want to work and I can see why.

Amazon provides health care for all employees from day one. Furthermore, employees have a fast track to career advancement.

There's quite a bit of variety in an fulfillment center associates time at Amazon. One day they could be loading a truck, and another day they could be packing things into a box destined for a customer.

Although the moves are repetitive, leveraging technology, Amazon works hard to ensure they're as smooth and have the least strain for each Associate.

For example, instead of using one hand to hold a scanner and another hand to hold an item for packaging, an associate can use both hands as the scanners are affixed on stands. This "small" change in process reduces muscle strain for associates.

This is an example of how Amazon is always changing to do what's best for the customer, its employees and its profits.

Throughout the fulfillment center were vending machines which contained gloves, box openers and other items an employee might need to do their job. Again, saving employees time and increasing efficiency for Amazon.

Free Market Economy

I was only in the fulfillment center for an hour, but just that time gave me a greater appreciation for Amazon.

I did then, and I feel strongly now, that it was a MISTAKE for New York lawmakers and community organizers to fight against Amazon's move to Long Island City.

Amazon is a HUGE company, making over $200 billion in revenue. This is good. We want strong companies.

It's also providing jobs for over 600,000 people.

Amazon fulfillment centers are not the "factories" of the late 1800's and early 1900's.

No this is a safe fulfillment center, paying a good entry level wage.

Amazon is a good company, providing a great service to the US economy and the globe.

It's only a because of a free market economy, with competitors, entrepreneurs and innovators that enable an economy to thrive.

Seeing this small part of Amazon today also gives me a greater appreciation for Jeff Business as an entrepreneur and his team who over the years has SCALED Amazon from his garage to a global company.

There's many small business and entrepreneurs who are Smart Hustlers, like me. I also must acknowledge the trail blazers and risk takers like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Carnegie Mellon, Nelson Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbuilt, JP Morgan, Thomas Edison and many others who THOUGHT BIG and BUILT BIG businesses to power global economies.

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