5 ms·

The immediate take away i get from this is that it really isn't about taking over human jobs. humans don't do this job nearly as frequently as the robots would

The immediate take away i get from this is that it really isn't about taking over human jobs. humans don't do this job nearly as frequently as the robots would do it, because in a standard retail environment like wal-mart, it doesn't really matter all that much if the reported in-stock quantity is slightly off for an item. that is to say, it matters, but not so much that the big-box retail environments i've worked in would dedicate more than one full-time staff to do this. if the robot is working 24hrs, it's doing the hours of three full-time staff and probably the work of six. That's a huge jump in the amount of stock checking that's happening at a store. So i wonder why wal-mart is investing in robots to fill this role, when there are so many other important jobs that they could automate instead. and the answer i land on is that the quantity-on-hand is critically important if you're using the store as a warehouse for a local delivery operation. If you've advertised something as in-stock for same-day delivery on your website, and then you let customers in to browse around your warehouse and move things around, having roaming scanners checking for mis-homed items is suddenly a lot more important.

zeckalpha 9y ago
As other jobs get automated, inventory checking could get more important.
forgotmypw 9y ago
It could also be for the same reasons you stated: it's low-controversy and low-responsibility.
- Trav5 9y ago
  Low-controversy, but visible. Wich will introduce people to the idea gently. They can add features to the robots later with less resistance.
- posterboy 9y ago
  availability is a psychologic factor in purchase decisions. The more in the soup pot, the more soup people will eat. Whereas the beloved low stock fear of missing out trigger might be too hectic for retail. The warehousing aspect is interesting too.
decker 9y ago
It's probably because stock checking is a simple repetitive task that humans tend to fail at due to boredom and mental fatigue while robots would accel at it because of the fact that it's simple, well defined and boring.
- stephengillie 9y ago
  It's traditional to spend 45-180 seconds in the back room, staring at your phone or talking to a coworker, before returning to the sales floor to tell the customer that you're sold out. It's like the Hello World of stocking product.
  - mattlondon 9y ago
    In my experience about a 10-15 years ago when I worked in a super-market there was no "back room" really - it was just a staging-post for getting stuff off the truck, putting it onto trolleys, then taking it out onto the shop floor to put on the shelves as quickly as possible. I dunno if people expect there to be this huge warehouse of stock "out the back" of every supermarket with loads of shelves holding tins of beans or loaves of bread or whatever just sitting there. The shop floor was the "back room"! I used to just tell folks that what they see is everything we had, so if they cant see it then we dont have it. Even with fancy modelling and "just-in-time" delivery stock-outs still happen - I remember one year working on the last weekend before Christmas. We "sold out" of turkeys - in reality it was just that people had them in their trolleys and hadn't checked-out yet so people were stealing them out of other customer's trolleys when they weren't looking! Happy Xmas! :-)
    - empath75 9y ago
      The exception to this is milk and bread. There’s always more bread and milk in the back.
      - kaybe 9y ago
        Or somewhere else. Some stores have the same item at multiple locations which one may not know.
wyager 9y ago
Stock checking seems vastly easier to accomplish electronically (a la RFID tags) than with dedicated robots.
- nostalgiac 9y ago
  Porque no los dos?
anindha 9y ago
Stock levels are important for home delivery but this robot is also a logical first step for a fully fledged shelf packing robot. If the current robot signals something is out of stock but a human determines the robot is incorrect then it means the store map is wrong or the product identification needs work. Once the error rate is low enough then full shelf packing can be implemented.
- mistermann 9y ago
  Have you ever worked in a store like Walmart? Robots won't be stocking shelves without major(!!!) changes to how things are displayed.
dbcurtis 9y ago
Also consider that better inventory data allows better just-in-time inventory refill, increasing $/ft^2 inventory turnover and therefore total $ sales per store. I suspect this is about driving analytics with higher quality, more frequent data.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Yes, I think this is more likely what they are doing. With people shopping the store, they can never really be sure about on-hand inventory even with robot checks. The robot could confirm that an item is on the shelf, and then a moment later a customer could put that item in a shopping cart and not check out for another 30 minutes or more. During that time the on-hand count is wrong.
hkmurakami 9y ago
Considering I've actually called stores to check whether they have a particular item in stock or not, I imagine you are not too far off in your hypothesis.
Noos 9y ago
They are trying to increase the productivity of the stock crew when the store is closed, enabling them to shed a couple of relatively expensive overnight stockers per store. These robots won't be operated during business hours, but take over or make easier some of those stocker duties. The robot will scan the shelves in a pattern, followed by a stocker with a cart to collect all the misplaced items. It will print shelf labels, without the need for a stocker to use a cumbersome printer relatively slowly. It also to me seems it might be a way for them to in-house inventory control services like RGIS, using robots to replace human counters. If it can detect misplaced items, one day it might be able to count placed items.
B-Con 9y ago
Or it's an experiment. They're giving it a lower importance job during the pilot program. Hard to imagine the initial deployment being on a mission critical path for the store's operation.
ilaksh 9y ago
It only checks inventory at this point because there are no robots that exist that are capable of doing the rest of it safely and effectively such as stocking the shelves in those uncontrolled dynamic environments. When they get more capable robots, they will replace more jobs.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
  Once robots can fix the shelving problems cheaper than humans then they will replace those jobs. As it stands total cost to fix an individual shelving problem likely dropped. In this case it'd be surprising if Walmart employed more people to fix shelving problems, but in other contexts we may have seen induced demand for more employees because the ROI for employee time improved. Not all increases in efficiency reduce the # of total jobs, we should expect to see the total # of jobs increase in some circumstances.
  - kicarus 9y ago
    And the workers are now focusing more on processes that could be argued are more skilled, like restocking the shelves, fixing prices, etc., than they were doing before, like identifying issues.
johnvega 9y ago
Relatively more real-time big data, AI/ML or at least sophisticated algorithms to detect or even predict shoplifting.
Shivetya 9y ago
in the distribution system I am in, excess inventory is concern. not only identifying over stocked items but rounding up all obsolete inventory taking space in stores and warehouses. then understanding why it is there. since wal mart doesn't close stores often or deal with private stores I am curious how they account for take backs from such. that alone can upset the inventory of any business. accurate inventory is so key with both the seller and supplier. I am not surprised they want to focus there. plus another issue is shrink, by having robots fulfill the role the chance of it vanishing on a count is gone
dilemma 9y ago
The answer is that this is one of few jobs that is simple enough that it can be automated.

zeckalpha 9y ago

As other jobs get automated, inventory checking could get more important.

forgotmypw 9y ago

It could also be for the same reasons you stated: it's low-controversy and low-responsibility.

Trav5 9y ago
Low-controversy, but visible. Wich will introduce people to the idea gently. They can add features to the robots later with less resistance.
posterboy 9y ago
availability is a psychologic factor in purchase decisions. The more in the soup pot, the more soup people will eat. Whereas the beloved low stock fear of missing out trigger might be too hectic for retail. The warehousing aspect is interesting too.

decker 9y ago

It's probably because stock checking is a simple repetitive task that humans tend to fail at due to boredom and mental fatigue while robots would accel at it because of the fact that it's simple, well defined and boring.

stephengillie 9y ago
It's traditional to spend 45-180 seconds in the back room, staring at your phone or talking to a coworker, before returning to the sales floor to tell the customer that you're sold out. It's like the Hello World of stocking product.
- mattlondon 9y ago
  In my experience about a 10-15 years ago when I worked in a super-market there was no "back room" really - it was just a staging-post for getting stuff off the truck, putting it onto trolleys, then taking it out onto the shop floor to put on the shelves as quickly as possible. I dunno if people expect there to be this huge warehouse of stock "out the back" of every supermarket with loads of shelves holding tins of beans or loaves of bread or whatever just sitting there. The shop floor was the "back room"! I used to just tell folks that what they see is everything we had, so if they cant see it then we dont have it. Even with fancy modelling and "just-in-time" delivery stock-outs still happen - I remember one year working on the last weekend before Christmas. We "sold out" of turkeys - in reality it was just that people had them in their trolleys and hadn't checked-out yet so people were stealing them out of other customer's trolleys when they weren't looking! Happy Xmas! :-)
  - empath75 9y ago
    The exception to this is milk and bread. There’s always more bread and milk in the back.
    - kaybe 9y ago
      Or somewhere else. Some stores have the same item at multiple locations which one may not know.

wyager 9y ago

Stock checking seems vastly easier to accomplish electronically (a la RFID tags) than with dedicated robots.

nostalgiac 9y ago
Porque no los dos?

anindha 9y ago

Stock levels are important for home delivery but this robot is also a logical first step for a fully fledged shelf packing robot. If the current robot signals something is out of stock but a human determines the robot is incorrect then it means the store map is wrong or the product identification needs work. Once the error rate is low enough then full shelf packing can be implemented.

mistermann 9y ago
Have you ever worked in a store like Walmart? Robots won't be stocking shelves without major(!!!) changes to how things are displayed.

dbcurtis 9y ago

Also consider that better inventory data allows better just-in-time inventory refill, increasing $/ft^2 inventory turnover and therefore total $ sales per store. I suspect this is about driving analytics with higher quality, more frequent data.

ams6110 9y ago
Yes, I think this is more likely what they are doing. With people shopping the store, they can never really be sure about on-hand inventory even with robot checks. The robot could confirm that an item is on the shelf, and then a moment later a customer could put that item in a shopping cart and not check out for another 30 minutes or more. During that time the on-hand count is wrong.

hkmurakami 9y ago

Considering I've actually called stores to check whether they have a particular item in stock or not, I imagine you are not too far off in your hypothesis.

Noos 9y ago

They are trying to increase the productivity of the stock crew when the store is closed, enabling them to shed a couple of relatively expensive overnight stockers per store. These robots won't be operated during business hours, but take over or make easier some of those stocker duties. The robot will scan the shelves in a pattern, followed by a stocker with a cart to collect all the misplaced items. It will print shelf labels, without the need for a stocker to use a cumbersome printer relatively slowly. It also to me seems it might be a way for them to in-house inventory control services like RGIS, using robots to replace human counters. If it can detect misplaced items, one day it might be able to count placed items.

B-Con 9y ago

Or it's an experiment. They're giving it a lower importance job during the pilot program. Hard to imagine the initial deployment being on a mission critical path for the store's operation.

ilaksh 9y ago

It only checks inventory at this point because there are no robots that exist that are capable of doing the rest of it safely and effectively such as stocking the shelves in those uncontrolled dynamic environments. When they get more capable robots, they will replace more jobs.

XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
Once robots can fix the shelving problems cheaper than humans then they will replace those jobs. As it stands total cost to fix an individual shelving problem likely dropped. In this case it'd be surprising if Walmart employed more people to fix shelving problems, but in other contexts we may have seen induced demand for more employees because the ROI for employee time improved. Not all increases in efficiency reduce the # of total jobs, we should expect to see the total # of jobs increase in some circumstances.
- kicarus 9y ago
  And the workers are now focusing more on processes that could be argued are more skilled, like restocking the shelves, fixing prices, etc., than they were doing before, like identifying issues.

johnvega 9y ago

Relatively more real-time big data, AI/ML or at least sophisticated algorithms to detect or even predict shoplifting.

Shivetya 9y ago

in the distribution system I am in, excess inventory is concern. not only identifying over stocked items but rounding up all obsolete inventory taking space in stores and warehouses. then understanding why it is there. since wal mart doesn't close stores often or deal with private stores I am curious how they account for take backs from such. that alone can upset the inventory of any business. accurate inventory is so key with both the seller and supplier. I am not surprised they want to focus there. plus another issue is shrink, by having robots fulfill the role the chance of it vanishing on a count is gone

dilemma 9y ago

The answer is that this is one of few jobs that is simple enough that it can be automated.