An Amazon fulfillment center
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Amazon is testing software to decide where warehouse workers should go. Some managers keep ignoring it.Internal planning documents show the tech giant intends to expand these labor-management systems across dozens of its North American fulfillment centers and sort centers, where they could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.However, some warehouse managers have been overriding the software recommendations, asking engineers to disable automated features, and finding other ways around the systems, according to internal Slack conversations and the documents from earlier this year.The pushback has been enough for Amazon to conclude that software recommendations alone aren't enough to get the new technology working as designed."Providing managers with optimized recommendations is necessary but insufficient," Amazon said in one of the documents. "Without system-enforced guardrails, manual overrides and habits erode even the best science."The conflict highlights a broader challenge in automating warehouse management: software can make decisions, but people still have to follow the guidance. The documents and internal communications reviewed by Business Insider suggest getting managers to trust the software, and ultimately defer to its decisions, is proving more difficult than Amazon expected.Competing philosophiesAmazon uses a growing mix of machine learning, computer vision, and other AI tools that increasingly guide staffing decisions traditionally made by managers.
