An Amazon warehouse employee
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Amazon thinks one of its biggest warehouse efficiency opportunities lies in jobs that generate little operational data. A new wearable-device system could change that.Internal documents reviewed by Business Insider show Amazon is testing a new program called Right Station Link that uses a wearable device to automatically capture check-in and labor-hours data for "indirect" support roles, such as equipment maintenance, safety coordination, and floor management, that have historically been harder to track.Unlike warehouse workers at packing stations, employees in indirect roles frequently move between assignments throughout a shift. Amazon expects the new devices to "improve labor tracking accuracy" and "reduce non-productive labor hours," one of the documents stated.According to one of the internal documents from March, these indirect roles account for roughly $2.8 billion worth of labor spending, or 85 million labor hours. At the time of the analysis, conducted last year, many of those roles lacked the "digital signals" needed to automatically confirm worker presence."Right Station Link brings automated labor hour measurement to $2.8B of manually tracked labor spend in one deployment, enabling labor automation for all sortation roles," one of the documents stated.The initiative is part of Amazon's next warehouse efficiency push. The company spent years streamlining how packages move. Now it's applying the same playbook to people, betting that smarter worker assignments and better labor monitoring can unlock millions of dollars in savings.Wearable scannersInternal documents show Amazon initially planned to rely on Zebra WS501 wearable scanners. Workers usually wear this scanner on the back of their hand. They get assignments and break notifications through the device, while missed check-ins automatically send alerts to managers, according to the documents.
