{"id":{"repo_id":"mit","oai_identifier":"oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/117954"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/mit/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/117954","repository":{"repo_id":"mit","name":"MIT","base_url":"https://dspace.mit.edu/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"Automation solutions for E-commerce multi-item packing","abstract":"As Amazon continues to experience a rapid growth in its e-commerce business, fulfillment efficiency needs to through safe implementation of advanced technology to create a better customer experience. Amazon has heavily invested in automating its outbound product sortation process that merges picked items but has yet to develop automation for multi-item packing. Individual item manipulation has been proven very challenging to automate due to the over 500 million unique products offered. This thesis proposes a container manipulation solution that integrates industrial robotics and other equipment with upstream sortation technology to automate the packing process. A physical prototype was built to test the concept and measure proficiency in critical quality metrics such as item accuracy, product damage, and packing density/orientation. Additionally, an operational simulation for the system was developed to determine the optimal capacity sizing for the integrated sortation and packing system. Lastly, sensitivity analysis on a financial model was performed to optimize for the net present value (NPV) and payback period. After a series of controlled experiments and process improvements, the prototype produced promising results, given the rudimentary nature of the prototype. The system generated item accuracy defects at 2%, product damage defects at 2% and packing orientation defects at 17%. While these results are not adequate to be used in live operation, a development path to acceptable performance appears attainable. Furthermore, implementation of the technology would generate approximately and $100M in NPV across the global fulfillment network.","abstract_html":"As Amazon continues to experience a rapid growth in its e-commerce business, fulfillment efficiency needs to through safe implementation of advanced technology to create a better customer experience. Amazon has heavily invested in automating its outbound product sortation process that merges picked items but has yet to develop automation for multi-item packing. Individual item manipulation has been proven very challenging to automate due to the over 500 million unique products offered. This thesis proposes a container manipulation solution that integrates industrial robotics and other equipment with upstream sortation technology to automate the packing process. A physical prototype was built to test the concept and measure proficiency in critical quality metrics such as item accuracy, product damage, and packing density/orientation. Additionally, an operational simulation for the system was developed to determine the optimal capacity sizing for the integrated sortation and packing system. Lastly, sensitivity analysis on a financial model was performed to optimize for the net present value (NPV) and payback period. After a series of controlled experiments and process improvements, the prototype produced promising results, given the rudimentary nature of the prototype. The system generated item accuracy defects at 2%, product damage defects at 2% and packing orientation defects at 17%. While these results are not adequate to be used in live operation, a development path to acceptable performance appears attainable. Furthermore, implementation of the technology would generate approximately and $100M in NPV across the global fulfillment network.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Walker, Andrew (Andrew Millington)"],"institution":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology","degree_name":null,"degree_level":null,"degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":"Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT","school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Nikolaos Trichakis and Maria Yang."],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2018,"date_issued":"2018","date_published":"2018","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:21:24Z","subjects":["Sloan School of Management.","Mechanical Engineering.","Leaders for Global Operations Program."],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission."],"rights_urls":["http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582"],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117954","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.uri"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Nikolaos Trichakis and Maria Yang."]},{"key":"dc:contributor.department","label":"Department","values":["Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT","Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering","Sloan School of Management"]},{"key":"dc:contributor.other","label":"Dc Contributor Other","values":["Leaders for Global Operations Program."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Walker, Andrew (Andrew Millington)"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.accessioned","label":"Dc Date Accessioned","values":["2018-09-17T15:51:23Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2018-09-17T15:51:23Z"]},{"key":"dc:date.issued","label":"Date","values":["2018"]},{"key":"dc:publisher","label":"Institution","values":["Massachusetts Institute of Technology"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Thesis"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Sloan School of Management.","Mechanical Engineering.","Leaders for Global Operations Program."]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language.iso","label":"Language (ISO)","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission."]},{"key":"dc:rights.uri","label":"Rights URI","values":["http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117954"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Thesis: M.B.A., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2018.","Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2018.","Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.","Includes bibliographical references (page 49)."]},{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["As Amazon continues to experience a rapid growth in its e-commerce business, fulfillment efficiency needs to through safe implementation of advanced technology to create a better customer experience. Amazon has heavily invested in automating its outbound product sortation process that merges picked items but has yet to develop automation for multi-item packing. Individual item manipulation has been proven very challenging to automate due to the over 500 million unique products offered. This thesis proposes a container manipulation solution that integrates industrial robotics and other equipment with upstream sortation technology to automate the packing process. A physical prototype was built to test the concept and measure proficiency in critical quality metrics such as item accuracy, product damage, and packing density/orientation. Additionally, an operational simulation for the system was developed to determine the optimal capacity sizing for the integrated sortation and packing system. Lastly, sensitivity analysis on a financial model was performed to optimize for the net present value (NPV) and payback period. After a series of controlled experiments and process improvements, the prototype produced promising results, given the rudimentary nature of the prototype. The system generated item accuracy defects at 2%, product damage defects at 2% and packing orientation defects at 17%. While these results are not adequate to be used in live operation, a development path to acceptable performance appears attainable. Furthermore, implementation of the technology would generate approximately and $100M in NPV across the global fulfillment network."]},{"key":"dc:description.degree","label":"Dc Description Degree","values":["M.B.A.","S.M."]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Automation solutions for E-commerce multi-item packing"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor.advisor":["Nikolaos Trichakis and Maria Yang."],"dc:contributor.department":["Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT","Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering","Sloan School of Management"],"dc:contributor.other":["Leaders for Global Operations Program."],"dc:creator":["Walker, Andrew (Andrew Millington)"],"dc:date.accessioned":["2018-09-17T15:51:23Z"],"dc:date.available":["2018-09-17T15:51:23Z"],"dc:date.issued":["2018"],"dc:description":["Thesis: M.B.A., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2018.","Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2018.","Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.","Includes bibliographical references (page 49)."],"dc:description.abstract":["As Amazon continues to experience a rapid growth in its e-commerce business, fulfillment efficiency needs to through safe implementation of advanced technology to create a better customer experience. Amazon has heavily invested in automating its outbound product sortation process that merges picked items but has yet to develop automation for multi-item packing. Individual item manipulation has been proven very challenging to automate due to the over 500 million unique products offered. This thesis proposes a container manipulation solution that integrates industrial robotics and other equipment with upstream sortation technology to automate the packing process. A physical prototype was built to test the concept and measure proficiency in critical quality metrics such as item accuracy, product damage, and packing density/orientation. Additionally, an operational simulation for the system was developed to determine the optimal capacity sizing for the integrated sortation and packing system. Lastly, sensitivity analysis on a financial model was performed to optimize for the net present value (NPV) and payback period. After a series of controlled experiments and process improvements, the prototype produced promising results, given the rudimentary nature of the prototype. The system generated item accuracy defects at 2%, product damage defects at 2% and packing orientation defects at 17%. While these results are not adequate to be used in live operation, a development path to acceptable performance appears attainable. Furthermore, implementation of the technology would generate approximately and $100M in NPV across the global fulfillment network."],"dc:description.degree":["M.B.A.","S.M."],"dc:identifier.uri":["http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117954"],"dc:language.iso":["eng"],"dc:publisher":["Massachusetts Institute of Technology"],"dc:rights":["MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission."],"dc:rights.uri":["http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582"],"dc:subject":["Sloan School of Management.","Mechanical Engineering.","Leaders for Global Operations Program."],"dc:title":["Automation solutions for E-commerce multi-item packing"],"dc:type":["Thesis"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:21:24Z"}