Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 3.70
…Amazon….until it wasn’t. Especially once other large retailers, like Walmart, began to catch up. More Than In-Sourcing: Amazon Has Done This Before Amazon has come into other industries and devastated the market leaders before. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples. Amazon vs. Traditional Bookstores and Publishing Bookstores are going the way of the dinosaur. Just recently, I walked around my local mall and realized with dismay that there wasn’t a single bookstore. I can’t recall walking around a mall without a bookstore until that moment. What happened? Large book retailers didn’t understand what the advent of digital…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 4.81
…such as AutoZone, Lowe’s, Pizza Hut, Target, Walgreens and Walmart to help assess retailers’ autonomous same-day and last-mile delivery needs. On average, more than 60 percent of merchants’ customers live within three miles of a store location, demonstrating the opportunity for on-demand, hyper-local delivery services. “The FedEx SameDay Bot is an innovation designed to change the face of local delivery and help retailers efficiently address their customers’ rising expectations,” said Brie Carere, executive vice president and chief marketing and communications officer for FedEx. “The bot represents a milestone in our ongoing mission to solve the complexities and expense of same-day,…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 2.74
…for out-of-stocks, incorrect prices, and wrong or missing labels. Walmart is testing such robots in its retail stores, and early reports show that employees like using the robots to perform boring, repetitive tasks. In addition, customers were fascinated by, or at least indifferent to, the presence of the robots. Read: Warehouse Drones Ready for Digital Inventory Management Furthermore, chatbots are being used for self-service retail tasks, and their use is expected to expand. Many consumer-facing companies, including banks and internet service providers, employ automated systems or virtual assistants to help customers with basic tasks over the phone or through internet…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 29.81
…Kimmet, former vice president of cloud computing platform at Walmart, has joined the company as vice president of engineering. Kimmet will lead Fetch’s growing hardware, software, and quality engineering teams, and scale Fetch’s Cloud Robotics Platform to support the complex warehouse and logistics environments in which Fetch’s Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) operate. “I was drawn to Fetch Robotics for its innovative cloud-based approach to robotics, and the opportunity to advance the development of a platform that brings the advantages of cloud computing to the edge,” said Kimmet. “As Fetch’s on-demand automation solution continues to penetrate the market, there is a…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 10.71
…Kors, Canadian Tire, Geodis and a former Amazon and Walmart executive. Finding that key partner in the organization who can be a champion for the project remains elusive, as does getting the attention of senior decision makers. But, the labor issue came up in this session as well. Brock Eckles, director of strategic solutions for the 3PL Geodis, noted that a large consumer electronics company that is one of his clients has made a decision to invest heavily in automation because they can no longer fight the war over associates. Ron Kyslinger, a former Walmart SVP, argued that automation should…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 4.18
…being used to take inventory in the warehouse. Kroger, Walmart, Macy’s, Target and Coca-Cola are just a few leading companies that are testing and investing in the next generation of advanced warehouse automation. Their use is the next logical step to leverage efficiencies in supply chains that are already under severe pressure to speed up order fulfillment and reduce costs. While investing in advanced automation might seem to be the best way to manage fulfillment, the analysis to determine the best fit and return on investment is often insufficient or influenced by the automation and robotics manufacturer or reseller. Before…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 10.95
…Chris Sultemeier, former executive vice president of logistics for Walmart, joined the board of warehouse drone pioneer PINC to help roll out the company's new technology. Read the Article: Former Walmart Executive Chris Sultemeier Joins Warehouse Drone Pioneer PINC “I’ve had the pleasure of knowing the PINC team for almost four years now,” Sultemeier said in the announcement of his board position. “With the company’s experience and core intellectual property in asset and inventory identification, I’ve seen firsthand how large organizations can benefit from PINC’s solutions, especially the aerial inventory robots.” Prior to retiring from Walmart in 2017, Sultemeier oversaw…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 6.14
…northeastern part of the state, there’s distribution, with large Walmart, Target and Children’s Place distribution centers. All of these facilities will need trained maintenance technicians. “The No. 1 issue before people locate here is: Where are my employees going to come from,” says Kracke. It’s not just a concern for today. “Our auto manufacturers view this as a 50-year lifecycle and they want to know they’re going to have employees over that 50-year period,” he says. About 50% of the equipment in the technology center is owned by the vendors whose systems are used by area manufacturers, and they rotate…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 4.64
…supply chain conferences, much like RFID following the infamous Walmart mandate about a decade earlier. Given the number of e-commerce deliveries every day in my neighborhood in a small town in New Hampshire, I sometimes imagined the sky blackened with Amazon drones, like a scene out of Hitchcock’s The Birds. And then? Well, at least for now, my packages still arrive the old-fashioned way from a UPS, USPS or FedEx driver. Which isn’t to say that drones don’t have a role in the supply chain. Two years ago, in an article in Supply Chain Management Review author Nick Vyas outlined…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 4.78
…customer expectations and do it more efficiently than ever. Walmart and Amazon can afford to develop these capabilities internally. Other companies’ primary focus is on getting orders out the door. They need to bring knowledge, expertise and innovation from the outside to help them apply technologies and systems that optimize operations. We believe companies need to have a program in place that provides 10% classroom training, 20% coaching and mentoring and 70% experience-based learning. People have to be life-long students who continuously improve. The future of distribution depends on developing a talent pool that can apply decision science and technology…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 30.39
Technology helps Walmart save time Whether it’s at work or at home, things like a smartphone or a car’s voice-activation software free up valuable minutes of your day. That’s exactly the idea behind something new Walmart is testing in a small number of our stores: using automation to handle tasks that are repeatable, predictable and manual, like scanning shelves for out-of-stock items, incorrect prices, and wrong or missing labels (see the video above). This new shelf-scanning technology frees up time for Walmart associates to focus on what they tell Walmart are the most important and exciting parts of working at…
Found in Robotics News & Content, with a score of 10.07
…misplaced packages, stolen merchandise, and returned goods. In 2013, Walmart lost up to $3B due to discrepancies between inventory records and actual stock, according to Forbes. Now drone-based package-tracking tech could finally help solve this problem. Read: Walmart Testing Warehouse Drones to Catalog and Manage Inventory New research from MIT proposes lightweight drones that can help track and manage inventory in large-scale environments by allowing passive, long-range radio frequency identification (RFID) scanning. RFID tags have long provided a potential solution to the problem of effective package tracking through digital cataloging. Think of it as a much more sophisticated version of…