Amazon smashed delivery records in 2023, zipping over 7 billion Prime packages to members worldwide faster than ever before!
Amazon is consistently improving its delivery speed, revealing on Tuesday that it boosted the quantity of items delivered in the U.S. on the same day or overnight by over 65% compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. Amazon further highlighted achieving its swiftest global delivery speeds for Prime members in 2023, with over 7 billion units arriving within the same or next day. This included more than 4 billion in the U.S. and over 2 billion in Europe.
The organisation accomplished this through the localization of its activities and transportation systems, reducing the average distance covered by each package by up to 25 kilometres in Europe. Amazon intends to enhance delivery speed further in 2024 by utilising artificial intelligence, streamlining inventory placement, and extending its Same-Day Delivery service.
Doug Herrington, CEO of worldwide Amazon stores said ina post, “We achieved our fastest-ever global shipping speeds last year by focusing on a few key initiatives—shortening the distance our deliveries had to travel to reach customers, improving our inventory placement, and building out our Same-Day Delivery service.”
Herrington emphasised the company’s commitment to reducing the distance travelled for deliveries, optimising inventory placement, and expanding the Same-Day Delivery service. The Same-Day Delivery sites, functioning as both fulfilment centres and delivery stations, enable Amazon to efficiently fulfil, sort, and deliver products from a single location.
Throughout the year, nine new dedicated sites were established, serving 18 additional U.S. cities, and the Same-Day Delivery option is now available in over 110 U.S. metro areas.
Amazon’s transition to regional fulfilment centres across the country, offering a diverse range of products, minimises cross-country shipments and decreases the number of stops per package after orders are placed.
Faster deliveries in 2024
With such great response to their same day delivery service in 2023, Amazon plans to improvise it more by adding developments such as AI. Doug Herrington further said in the post, “ We’re continuing to reimagine our operations network, harnessing the power of AI to place even more items in just the right places to anticipate and meet customer demand. We also plan to further expand our Same-Day Delivery service to reach more customers. Delivering packages faster isn’t a matter of moving faster within our facilities—it’s being smarter about our structure and product placement. We’ll continue to make our workplaces safer, even as we get faster. Our recordable incident rate continues to improve year over year and is down double-digit percentages since 2019.”
Herrington also acknowledged Sequoia, a warehouse robotics system aimed at accelerating the processing time for items. This technology is part of a broader initiative by the company to leverage robotics for enhancing warehouse safety, especially in light of increased scrutiny regarding injuries and safety practices at Amazon’s fulfilment, sortation, and delivery facilities.
Furthermore, Amazon continues to advance its Prime Air drone delivery initiative, noting its impressive click-to-delivery time in the fourth quarter of 2023. An example includes a box of Annie’s Cocoa and Vanilla Bunny Cookies delivered in 15 minutes and 29 seconds in College Station, Texas. In a notable milestone last October, the company successfully completed its first prescription medication delivery using a drone.
