Xavier Zuvekas ’19: Summer Intern at Amazon Robotics
This summer I have spent the past month working at Amazon Robotics (AR). AR was previously an independent company, Kiva Systems, before being acquired as a subsidiary of Amazon in 2012. I am part of the Operations team working with the supply chain for parts, manufacturing of robots (Drive Units), and ultimately packaging of the Drive Units to be shipped to fulfillment centers around the world. Every morning, I arrive to work at 8:00, pay a visit to the cafeteria where there is free coffee, soda, and cereal, then get to my cube to start work for the day. At 9:00 we have a team meeting where management, project leads, and interns give updates as to how their current projects are progressing.
During my first week, I spent the majority of my time on the manufacturing floor. As a way to get all new interns acquainted with the robots, everyone gets a hands on experience with the manufacturing team. Each one of us built a Drive Unit from start to finish on the production line, ran tests on all of the moving parts of the robots with the Quality Assurance (QA) team, and finished the week with diagnosing and resolving issues in faulty DUs that failed QA tests. Taking a hands on approach to building the robots gave me a solid understanding of how the current generation Drive Units work from the ground up. This knowledge has helped me immensely in a project that I am currently working on with an intern from UMass Amherst: A reassignment of work in order to reduce the chance of line workers developing work related chronic issues such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
Everyone at AR has welcomed me with open arms, making me feel like a necessary member of the community after just a month of interning here. By my second week, I was assigned my first project with an intern from UConn: A time study to identify and resolve inefficiencies in the shipping process currently utilized by the shipping department. This involved extended data collection over multiple weeks in order to have enough data points to show meaningful results. After putting the data into an Excel spreadsheet we were able to compare the pros and cons of each technique that the workers were using to package the robots. In the next week, my coworker and I will be presenting our findings to the Operations team along with our recommended solutions to the issues that we found.
In the past month, I have learned so much about both robots and production engineering. Work can be difficult, however having such an incredibly supportive team around me has made it not only doable, but a very enjoyable experience. I look forward to the next five weeks of this amazing opportunity. I could not have asked for a better way to spend the summer.
