America’s biggest retailer is on a mission to become America’s fastest.
One key piece of Walmart’s mission is automating its supply chain. The retailer has spent the past several years plowing cash into building new facilities equipped with an army of robots, coordinated by AI.
That money is paying off in terms of raw speed.
What makes these distribution centers especially powerful is that they use store-level data to direct robots to arrange pallets, making it easier for workers to restock aisles, Walmart US CEO David Guggina told the Oppenheimer Consumer Growth and E-commerce conference on Tuesday.
Store workers used to spend hours unloading a truck. Now they can do so in a fraction of that time.
“Moving to intelligently layered pallets allows us to unload that trailer in minutes,” Guggina said.
The distribution centers could also know which pallets contain the most urgent supplies for a given store and load those pallets onto the truck last, so they can be unloaded first, he said.
Guggina also said the company expects to have 16 of these next-generation distribution centers by the end of the year.
The combination of automation and inventory visibility is helping the company run a better supply chain, improve stores, and cut costs. Those savings, he said, allow Walmart to continue investing in lower prices for customers.
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