Robots to work in 50 Wal-Marts, including several in Arkansas
PHOTOS/VIDEO: Robots to work in 50 Wal-Marts, including
several in Arkansas
By Robbie Neiswanger October 26, 2017 at 4:30 a.m.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. customers in a few Arkansas stores
will soon cross paths with robots roaming the aisles.
The Bentonville company said it will begin using
autonomous devices in about 50 stores next month that are programmed to scan
store shelves and identify things like out-of-stock items or products
incorrectly priced or placed in the wrong spaces. Wal-Mart stores in Searcy,
Sherwood and Pine Bluff will be among the first to introduce the robots
beginning in early November, according to the company. A Wal-Mart store in
Rogers will have a robot early next year.
The 50-store trial is an extension of a test first
conducted in Pennsylvania as the retailer explores ways to use technology to
improve its operations. John Crecelius, Wal-Mart U.S. vice president of central
operations, said the expansion will give the company a chance to collect and
analyze additional data as the robots take on tasks typically done by
employees.
"If you think about trying to go through a facility
with all these different [items] and figure out if your prices are accurate, it
can be very time-consuming," Crecelius said. "Then to try to figure
out what to do about it. Imagine how much time you've lost in doing all
that."
The robots being tested as a possible solution were
produced by California-based Bossa Nova Robotics. Martin Hitch, the company's
chief business officer, said Bossa Nova has been developing the technology for
five years and began a partnership with Wal-Mart about three years ago.
A robot will be kept at a recharging station in a
selected store and will move into action when it receives a "mission"
like scanning aisles to locate inaccurately priced items. The information
collected will be relayed to employees, who then will determine how to
prioritize and correct any problems that it finds. Hitch said the information
will give department managers and other employees "visibility across the
entire department before they start the day."
"It's still really all about the A to Z process of
capturing data, analyzing data, creating actions and then taking actions,"
Hitch said. "Within that, we're good at doing a part of it, and we're
terrible at doing a part of it. When it comes to picking the product up, the
robot has no arms. That's a really difficult science, and it's a slow, slow
science. We know that the store associates will always be better at that."
Automation is taking a larger role in retail as companies
like Wal-Mart work to improve efficiency and control costs. Last year, Wal-Mart
introduced cash recycler machines at its stores and centralized invoicing
operations, leading to the elimination of about 7,000 backroom positions at the
store level.
But Wal-Mart said the in-store robots are not
replacements for workers. Instead, the company described the technology as a
tool intended to aid employees and improve customer service, creating a quicker
way to ensure that the right items are in the right places with accurate prices
when shoppers search for them.
"It has an objective to go look at certain
things," Crecelius said. "For example, we might have it run very
early before our morning associates show up so that when they show up, we have
the right information to say this is what's most important. This is where we
need your help right now and this is what's most important to the customer. It
helps them figure out what's most important without having to go through the
entire facility to figure those things out."
Wal-Mart continues to invest in technology as it competes
with retailers like Amazon.com. It is using drones in distribution centers to
check inventory more efficiently and keep up with customer demand. Last year,
the retailer began testing large, orange towers in its stores that dispense
products that have been ordered online by customers. The test has since
expanded with Wal-Mart planning to have about 100 pickup towers installed in
stores this year.
Brad Bogolea, chief executive officer of California-based
Simbe Robotics, said earlier this month during the Northwest Arkansas
Technology Summit that brick-and-mortar retailers like Wal-Mart must
"embrace technology" to remain relevant.
His company has developed Tally, an autonomous device
that performs store functions similar to the Bossa Nova robots being used by Wal-Mart.
Bogolea said the goal of in-store helpers like Tally is to perform
time-consuming tasks that free up employees to concentrate on other
customer-facing jobs.
"Today retailers perform manual audits across their
footprint to try to keep track of the health of product on the shelves,"
Bogolea said. "This is an incredibly mundane, monotonous, time-consuming
process that takes retailers like Wal-Mart hundreds of hours every week. ...
Any retailer in the top 15 spends over a quarter billion a year just performing
shelf audits. There has to be a better way."
Bossa Nova's robots will operate during the day and have
on-site technicians monitoring their actions as they interact with objects and
customers. But Hitch said the robots are fully autonomous, and the technician
is "100 percent hands off" during the tests. The technicians will
move off-site next year, and the robots will continue to be monitored from
afar.
Hitch added that Bossa Nova's robots have recently
reached more than 620 miles of autonomous driving and have never had a
collision. Three-dimensional imagery shows all the obstacles that are in an
aisle, and the robot is programmed to move around them if possible, or return
later. It also is careful around humans.
"If we encounter a person, we have this view of be
respectful first," Hitch said. "The robot will always stop. We move
backwards to move away from the person. So we're giving them the space."
Crecelius said there are a number of different ways the
retailer can use the information collected during the 50-store test. The data
will be analyzed by Wal-Mart employees, and the company will determine the next
step.
There are no current plans to introduce the robots in
additional stores, but Crecelius said the company has been "fairly
impressed with how it works" so far.
"From our perspective, when you're doing things like
this you're trying to improve your service to your customers and trying to make
things simpler and easier for your associates at the same time," Crecelius
said.
A Section on 10/26/2017
Print Headline: Robots to work in 50 Wal-Marts
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