Walmart Converts US Stores Into Warehouses With Order Picker Robots

 Walmart Converts US Stores Into Warehouses With Order Picker Robots

This will speed up the delivery of orders, according to the company.

Walmart is converting some of its stores into small, automated online order picking centers. The company does not disclose how much money it will spend on the refurbishment and how long it will take.

Instead of an employee who walks through the warehouse and collects the order, the goods will be delivered to the collector by robots. They will move between the cabinets using wheels and bring products that the warehouse worker will collect in the order.

According to Tom Ward, vice president of digital operations for the company, dozens of stores will become assembly centers - they will either be completely refurbished or a warehouse will be completed. The company does not name the exact number of stores in which warehouses are equipped.

Walmart will supply these centers with frequently purchased items ranging from groceries to electronics. According to the company, this will make order delivery and pickup much faster.

To create the malls, Walmart will team up with startup Alert Innovation, which worked to create the Alphabot system, warehouse solutions provider Dematic, and a startup Fabric, which builds automated malls based on its technologies.

The retailer began testing its first center in Salem in 2019, using an Alphabot robot to deliver goods from shelves. The company immediately noticed the efficiency of the system - according to its own data, the number of orders increased, and the speed made it possible to deliver them within an hour.

In addition, in some stores the retailer will open automatic pick-up points - customers and couriers will be able to drive up to it, scan the code and pick up the order.

This is not the first robotization project for Walmart: in 2019, the retailer opened a smart store that monitors the availability of goods on the shelves to optimize the work of sellers.

And in 2020, Walmart ditched robots for inventorying goods - because of the pandemic, people were busy collecting orders, and the company decided to employ them instead of robots.