Amazon Warehouse Safety: Why is Jeff Bezos Spending $66M on Forklift Safety Technologies
In the 2021 final annual shareholder letter from Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, he stated that“In 2021, we’ll invest more than $300 million into safety projects, including an initial $66 million to create technology that will help PREVENT COLLISIONS of forklifts and other types of industrial vehicles.”
Why is Amazon Investing in Forklift Safety?
In 2019, Amazon fulfillment centers recorded 14K serious injuries. The overall rate of 7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees was 33% higher than in 2016 and nearly double the most recent industry standard. Add two worker deaths in 2017 and another in 2019, Amazon knew something had to be done.
Covid-19 Created Massive Pressure on Amazon Warehouses
Covid-19 accelerated levels of e-commerce demand to those projected to be in 2030. With 10 years of demand realized in just one year, Amazon was bursting with employee, material handling, and shipping activity. However, like everyone else in the industry, labor shortage, space shortage and temporary worker shortages created plenty of chaos; a perfect recipe for pedestrian and worker injuries and accidents.
As an increase in accidents, injuries and deaths within facilities was going to be bad for business, they decided it was time to solve the safety crisis. Amazon being at the forefront of implementing technologies, Mr. Bezos is not afraid to invest money to build solutions not being filled in the market today. When it comes to preventing forklift accidents, he won’t have to look very far with SIERA.AI.
What Changes will Amazon Warehouse Safety Innovations Bring to the Industry?
We’ll have to wait and see. But a couple things are for certain:
- ✅ Manufacturing, distribution centers and warehouse leaders will be watching their choices and results
- ✅ The ones who embrace safety technologies will attract the best labor…those who don’t will see labor churn grow
- ✅ Those who ignore safety innovations will slowly become irrelevant in a changing world looking for sustainable leadership
It’s time for the industry to take the problem of industrial vehicle and warehouse safety to the next level.