Assignment no.

1
Name: Aliha Azhar
Id: 11420
Walmart new technology :
Walmart is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of
hypermarkets also called supercenters, discount department stores, and grocery stores from
the United States, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas.The company was founded by Sam
Walton and James "Bud" Walton in nearby Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 and incorporated under
Delaware General Corporation Law on October 31, 1969. We are committed to exceeding
customers’ expectations and serving them in new ways, whether it’s in a store, curbside or at
their homes. For years, we have been making big investments in technology and
infrastructure across our supply chain to test and learn where we can make the biggest
difference in fulfilling customer orders. In recent years, we’ve announced investments in
technology for our regional distribution centers and next-generation fulfillment centers. Of
course not everyone needs the performance which would drive up power consumption and
heat beyond mobile device capabilities. Just viewing stuff doesn’t really need much
processing speed. But the things they view needs to be created by someone, it doesn’t just
appear out of nothing. And nearly all creations need very high end processing, completely
beyond any mobile’s capability.
The only other alternative is to go with things like rack mount servers. Even less portable. A
way of attempting to use these without needing them in front of you is remote desktop
streaming - or similar, what tends to be called “cloud” computing. Though for some tasks the
inordinate latencies involved makes them unacceptable.
For the foreseeable future, desktops will still be needed by at least some individuals. Probably
not most though.Our market fulfillment centers, or MFCs, are a continuation of these
efforts.It also owns and operates Sam's Club retail warehouses. Today Walmart announced it
will begin offering several of its own technologies and capabilities to other businesses and
brands seeking to better serve customers as they increasingly shop across digital and physical
storefronts. As part of this effort, Walmart also announced a strategic partnership with Adobe
to integrate Walmart’s Marketplace, online and in-store fulfillment and pickup technologies
with Adobe Commerce, a leading commerce solution for merchants and brands.During the
last several years, Walmart has built a world class organization that has developed its own
technologies and services to meet the rapidly evolving needs of customers at scale. These
unique capabilities enable Walmart to better serve customers, create differentiated
experiences and grow its business as digital shopping continues to increase. Walmart has
built a tech platform that uses automation and machine learning to turn a near-infinite number
of factors into usable data which helps in improving its last-mile delivery ecosystem. As it
learns through artificial intelligence (AI), the platform is designed to improve. Walmart has
turned to machine learning and artificial intelligence to help save money, create personalized
experiences at scale and make workers more efficient.

The company is also building out its ability to do omnichannel assortment planning to figure
out which stores need which products out of the millions it offers, and how to phase those in.
What ML and AI allows you to do is to bring all of that information together and to be able to
synthesize it and to be able to gain insights into that, leading to more dynamic
management.Walmart has also employed the technologies to make store associates’ jobs
easier. Its Me@Walmart app, which debuted in June and was built in-house, uses machine
learning, augmented reality, camera vision and AI, letting U.S. associates clock in on their
mobile device, view their upcoming shifts and request schedule changes, among other
features. Walmart is currently working on a tool for corporate workers that is “very similar”
to Me@Walmart. Machine learning and AI are also helping Walmart save money.Its use of
machine learning for markdowns save the company more than $30 million. Earlier this year,
Walmart said it saw shopper acceptance nearly double for substitution a tricky part for online
orders that can lead to sales loss and dissatisfaction, since it started using deep learning AI,
which imitates how brains process data and can learn without human supervision, for online
grocery orders.

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, Walmart has proven itself to be highly responsive and
adaptable. The retail giant quickly pivoted to meet the changing demands of its customers by
hiring additional staff, expanding its e-commerce services, and launching new fulfillment
centers across the United States.Being ahead of the innovation curve appears to be something
that comes naturally to Walmart, as its track record for embracing automation and robotics
confirms.

In December 2019, Walmart announced a partnership with self-driving startup Nuro, which
uses driverless tech to deliver products and groceries to customers. Testing of the service will
begin in Houston with Nuro’s R2 delivery vehicle and autonomous Toyota Priuses. Walmart
hopes to gain a better understanding of how it can best expand autonomous grocery delivery
across the country.Although the pilot program was planned shortly before the outbreak of the
coronavirus, the service is extremely well-placed to accommodate changes in consumer
behavior and the demand for socially distanced shopping.

Walmart has been experimenting internally with flying drone delivery since 2015 but has
finally taken the plunge into real-life customer deliveries. This September, the company
launched a pilot program with end-to-end drone delivery company Flytrex to implement
automated drone delivery that is convenient, safe, and fast. The small-scale program will
begin with drone deliveries of select grocery and household items to customers in
Fayetteville, North Carolina. Flytrex’s drones travel at 32 mph for up to 6.2 miles per trip and
are capable of carrying loads of up to 6.6 pounds. The drones don’t even need to land to
deliver their packages. Instead, the device lowers its cargo to the ground from 80 feet up in
the air.

The Intelligent Retail Lab (IRL) was revealed by Walmart in August 2019. Dubbed “the store
of the future,” the facility serves as a testing ground for the company’s latest forays into in-
store technology.The fully operational store in Levittown, New York, is 50,000 square feet,
holds over 30,000 items, and employs more than 100 staff. Technology in the IRL includes
AI-enabled cameras that can monitor inventory levels and alert staff when products need
restocking.The store is equipped with customer information stations and a Welcome Center,
which educates shoppers on the technology being used.

Following a year of testing, Walmart implemented Alphabot, a warehouse automation

system, in January this year. The system was designed by startup Alert Innovation and is
currently operating inside a 20,000-square-foot warehouse space. The system’s autonomous
carts collect certain items including refrigerated and frozen goods ordered by online
customers and deliver them to a workstation where they are checked, bagged, and delivered
by Walmart employees. Human employees will continue to process all fresh items by hand,
but the integration of Alphabot will serve to streamline Walmart’s online ordering process,
lowering dispense times, and improving accuracy. The robots can pick more than 800
products per hour.Following the successful implementation of in-store robots through 2019,
Walmart announced it would be expanding its use of shelf-scanning robots earlier this year.
San Francisco-based Bossa Nova Robotics has designed a robot that can scan shelf items to
help with pricing accuracy and restocking store inventory in real-time. Already present in 650
Walmart stores, the six-foot robots are soon to be installed in a further 350 locations.
Automation is not new to Walmart but the company now is aggressively seeking automation
for its fulfillment centers.

As a result, Robotic technology from GreyOrange will be used at Walmart Canada’s new
$118 million sortable fulfillment center in Rocky View County, Alberta.

The facility will be capable of: shipping 20 million items annually from the facility to
Walmart customers; storing 500,000 items to fulfill direct-to-home and in-store pickup
orders; and designed to optimize packaging, minimize waste, and reduce transportation costs.
The new center is part of Walmart Canada’s $3.5 billion investment to make the online and
in-store shopping experience simpler, faster, and more convenient for its customers.

Further, the company announced plans to build four new fulfillment centers. These will
implement automation technology that provides customers and Walmart+ members with
access to next or two-day shipping on millions of items. The retailer says that this results in
double the storage capacity and double the number of customer orders it’s able to fulfill in a
day.Delivery is one of the biggest strengths of Walmart and the company wants to be better at
it with the passing of every day. Apart from strengthening the supply chain, Walmart is using
emerging tech to improve its delivery services. For example, Walmart has built a tech
platform that uses automation and machine learning to turn a near-infinite number of factors
into usable data which helps in improving its last-mile delivery ecosystem. As it learns
through artificial intelligence (AI), the platform is designed to improve. Further, Walmart
wants to provide its delivery expertise to merchants both large and small.

In Aug 2021, Walmart announced a new delivery service business called Walmart GoLocal,
which allows other merchants, to tap into Walmart’s own delivery platform to get orders to
their customers.Merchants can choose to use the service for a variety of delivery types,
including scheduled and unscheduled deliveries, including same-day delivery, and they can
expand their delivery capacity and coverage as their own customer demand requires.