The world’s biggest retailer is testing digital labels that light up when activated with an app. The devices are already used by employees at a few dozen stores, where they flash green to help shelf stockers and blue to assist product pickers fulfilling online orders. — AFP
It’s a common headache: Shoppers comb through the cavernous aisles of a massive Walmart store, unable to find what they’re looking for. Soon, some will be able to follow a blinking light to the right shelf.
The world’s biggest retailer is testing digital labels that light up when activated with an app. The devices are already used by employees at a few dozen stores, where they flash green to help shelf stockers and blue to assist product pickers fulfilling online orders.
Walmart is planning a pilot for customers later this year (no word yet on the colour). The lights are possible after a years-long effort behind the scenes in which Walmart Inc has been automating the warehouses that supply stores and online merchandise. The goal is to improve profitability and productivity, and prove to investors that the world’s largest retailer isn’t just a slow-growing behemoth.
As Walmart invests in higher-margin businesses like digital advertising and finance, it’s also trying to wring out more revenue from stores and ecommerce without adding a substantial amount of new workers.
“We’ll probably have about the same number of people in five years, but with a larger business,” said John Furner, chief executive officer of Walmart’s US operations. “There will be jobs that we don’t have today. Some jobs will be the same, hopefully much better. And there will be jobs that go away.”
Walmart said last April that the unit cost of moving goods is likely to fall 20% in the coming years as robots play a larger role in the supply chain. As an example of how that’s taking hold, a Walmart Supercenter in Grapevine, Texas, is among the first to be supplied by three highly automated warehouses that combine robotics with human labor to increase capacity, accuracy and speed.
“Here, we’ll learn how much magic there is when you put it all together,” Furner said during a visit last year to the store, which is near Dallas.
One of the three facilities, a non-refrigerated distribution center, was retrofitted with more automation equipment. The other two are entirely new. One is a a refrigerated warehouse that handles everything from vegetables to frozen meals, while the other is a fulfillment center that specialises in online orders.
That facility helps to streamline the steps needed to unload goods and ship them back out to customers and stores: It now takes five, instead of 12, and involves much less walking. While employees used to trek as much as 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) a day around the facility, products now arrive directly at their workstations to be assembled and boxed. That allows workers to handle as many as four orders at once, the company says.
The online business, which competes with ecommerce giant Amazon.com Inc, is another piece of the puzzle and is crucial for retaining higher-income customers who started buying more from Walmart in recent years as inflation flared up. While the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company has made inroads, the process hasn’t always been smooth, with limited inventory of in-demand products being one common obstacle.
In an effort to cut down on out-of-stock items, store-based fulfillment centers maintain an inventory for online orders that’s separate from the sales floor. An internal app also gives store employees real-time information on the availability and location of products.
“The hardest thing for a retailer, and that includes us, is you don’t know what you own and where it is,” Furner said. “It could be in the stockroom. It could be on the counter ready to be served to the customer. It could be in a basket. It could be stolen, it could be lost. Variability is hard.”
For workers, the immediate concern is the endless burden of stocking shelves. Walmart employees told the company over and over that one of their most onerous tasks was changing prices – work that typically involves finding an item, counting the inventory, printing new labels and manually changing them.
With the digital labels, employees can update price tags with a phone-based app. Battery-powered rails hold the shelf tags, and installation takes a few minutes. The retailer will equip 500 stores with digital shelf labels as it readies this year’s pilot project introducing the lighting system to customers. In addition to the blue and green lights currently used by employees, the system can also flash in other colours: red, yellow, magenta and cyan.
The company will see whether shoppers like the option. It’s possible many won’t need it, since longtime customers typically know the location of most of the items they want, and Walmart’s external app already has the ability to direct people to the right aisle for products.
Eva DeJesus, 27, who was shopping recently at a Chicago Walmart, said she doubted whether she would use a shelf-light feature.
“I’m just rushing through the store,” she said as she plucked up rice and laundry detergent.
On the same shopping trip, though, DeJesus had trouble finding one of her favourite products: Sam’s Choice double cheese bagels. She finally located them on the highest shelf of the bread aisle – but it took some searching. – Bloomberg
