Welcome to Walmart. The Robot Will Grab Your Groceries.
Welcome
to Walmart. The Robot Will Grab Your Groceries.
Walmart is testing back-of-store automated systems that can
collect 800 products an hour, 10 times as many as a store worker
By Sarah Nassauer Jan. 8, 2020 11:00 am ET
In the backroom of a Walmart store
in Salem, N.H., is a floor-to-ceiling robotic system that the country’s largest
retailer hopes will help it sell more groceries online.
Workers stand on platforms in front of screens assembling online
orders of milk, cereal and toilet paper from the hulking automated system.
Wheeled robots carrying small baskets move along metal tracks to collect those
items. They are bagged for pickup later by shoppers or delivery to homes.
Walmart is one of several grocers including Albertsons Cos. and Kroger Co. that
are using automation to improve efficiency in a fast-growing but costly
business that comes with a range of logistical challenges.
The backroom robots could help
Walmart cut labor costs and fill orders faster and more accurately. It also
could address another problem: unclogging aisles that these
days can get crowded with clerks picking products for online
orders.
A store worker can collect around 80 products from store shelves
an hour, estimated John Lert, founder and chief executive of Alert Innovation,
the startup that has worked with Walmart to design the system dubbed Alphabot.
It is designed to collect 800 products an hour per workstation, operated by a
single individual, Mr. Lert said. Workers stock the 24-foot-high machine each
day with the products most often ordered online, including refrigerated and
frozen foods. Fresh produce is still picked by hand in store aisles.
A version of the Alphabot system will be installed in two more
stores later this year, one in Oklahoma and another in California, and a fourth
version of the system is already built in a store near Walmart’s headquarters,
a Walmart spokesman said. Mr. Lert and the spokesman declined to comment on the
cost of the system. Walmart started testing Alphabot in Salem last year, and in
recent weeks began using it to fill a significant portion of online grocery
orders at the store.
Walmart, already the country’s largest seller of groceries by
revenue, has become an online grocery heavyweight, too, by offering a service
from thousands of stores that lets shoppers pick up online orders from store
parking lots without leaving their cars. It also offers home grocery delivery
from more than 1,000 stores.
Online orders are still a relatively small part of total grocery
spending in the U.S. E-commerce was about 3.5% of overall food and beverage
category sales last year, according to market researcher Forrester. Some data
show online grocery sales are growing fast, but the logistical and profit
challenges of filling shoppers’ orders and delivering fresh food to homes have
retailers battling to find a model that pays off.
Using store workers to fill orders with products already on
shelves isn’t only costly, it makes it hard to tell online shoppers exactly
what’s available at any given moment.
“The whole problem with picking inventory from the shelf is
inventory is never where it’s supposed to be,” said Sucharita Kodali, retail
analyst at Forrester. “People move it around, and fast-moving items are never
there.”
Walmart, which employs around 1.5 million workers in the U.S.,
told investors last year that the retailer aimed to add automation and remodel
stores to better accommodate online orders after some shoppers complained about
clogging in the aisles. Walmart can’t “disadvantage our
most-profitable customer, which is the one who drives to the store and does all
the work themselves,” said Greg Foran, who was Walmart’s U.S. chief at the
time.
Albertsons, whose chains include Safeway and Jewel-Osco, is adding
online grocery fulfillment devices in store backrooms designed by Takeoff
Technologies. It added two of the automated systems to California Safeway
stores last year. Kroger and Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize NV’s
online grocery unit, Peapod, are investing in larger, more-remote distribution
centers to further automate the
process of grocery delivery.
Using stores and backrooms to process online grocery orders
gives retailers another way to generate income from existing assets, industry
consultants and executives say. Walmart has been looking for other ways to use
its base of around 4,700 U.S. stores to compete with Amazon.com Inc., including adding more services like
health care and selling technology like computing power based in stores to
other businesses.
Walmart first talked to Alert Innovation about building an
automation system in 2016, Mr. Lert said. At the time, Walmart executives
believed that for an online grocery business to become more profitable,
fulfillment had to happen close to customers and without having to send workers
weaving through aisles for every order, Mr. Lert said.
Walmart added 20,000 square feet of space to the Salem store to
facilitate the Alphabot system and more space for shoppers to pick up orders in
cars. It picked Salem because of its proximity to Alert’s headquarters in North
Billerica, Mass.
The store hired around 10 additional people to keep the machine
stocked and continue picking some fresh produce from the store shelves, the
Walmart spokesman said. “At this point we haven’t seen any movement in the head
count.”
In a continued test of the concept, the spokesman said, the two
additional stores where Walmart plans to install Alphabot are in areas with
high demand for online grocery orders.
Comments
Post a Comment