Walmart's AI-Powered Future

Walmart has made a lot of news this year with a variety of announcements about AI, part of its new "adaptive retail" strategy.“While omnichannel retail has been around for decades, this new type of retail – adaptive retail – takes it a step further,” said Suresh Kumar, global chief technology officer and chief development officer, Walmart. “It’s retail that is not only e-commerce or in-store, but a single, unified retail experience that seamlessly blends the best aspects of all channels. And for Walmart, adaptive retail is rooted in a clear focus on people.”The first of these adaptive retail efforts have been focused on customer-facing tools:A new GenAI-powered search experience now available to iOS customers. The enhanced search experience allows customers to now search by specific use cases, e.g., a football watch party versus individual searches for chips, wings, drinks and a 90-inch TV. It generates relevant, cross-category results.An expanded grocery InHome replenishment offering leveraging AI that promises refrigerators will be stocked by Walmart associates with the right items at the right time.A new exit program at Sam's Club using AI to allow members to skip receipt verification.And a new social commerce platform called Shop with Friends that takes AR shopping to the next level by enabling customers to share the virtual outfits they create with friends and get feedback on their fashion finds. But Walmart's adaptive retail strategy focused on artificial intelligence-powered tools is not limited to customer-facing technology. It's also about increasing efficiencies behind the scenes. And one way the retailer is doing that is by harnessing AI to optimize inventory management at the retailer's 600 Sam's Club stores, which average around 135,000 square feet.Sam’s is using AI-powered Inventory Scan towers that have been added to their existing fleet of robotic scrubbers available at every Sam's store.Once installed on the scrubber, the cloud-connected Inventory Scan tower captures data as it moves autonomously around the club. As functionality is deployed, insights such as product localization, planogram compliance, product stock levels, and verification of pricing accuracy are delivered to the club. Each function negates the need for time-consuming and potentially inaccurate manual processes that can impact product availability, member experience, or create waste caused by inaccurate ordering.Walmart Global Tech's director of software engineering, Sandeep Shekhawat, gave Progressive Grocer a demo of the technology."There's several cameras, including one that actually looking upwards," Shekhawat said. "What we do is take the images from the plug aerator. I'll send pictures to my team, our engineering team. And we apply our machine learning AI solution to manage our inventory."Shekhawat explained how the technology recognizes location and price."We can see the location pod so we can update our inventory system automatically. We can also read the price signs so if a price has changed in the system, or promotion, whatever reason, we can make sure the price sign matches the real price in the system," Shekhawat said.If they don't match, his team will send a message to the club. "And we can detect empty spaces. So previously every day in the evening an associate would have to do a club tour or walk-through to see which item was out of stock," Shekhawat said. "But this technology has the logic to detect the empty space. If the void percentage is high, for example 50%, we integrate a drop list automatically."Asked whether the company has plans to deploy the same tech at Walmart, Shekhawat said, "Not Walmart. The aisles are a bit narrow, and the scrubber is large."However, Walmart is exploring different ways to handle this in a similar way, he said, again leveraging AI. Walmart's inventory management systems have to connect to 4,700 stores, fulfillment centers, distribution centers and suppliers. Each week, approximately 255 million customers and members visit Walmart’s more than 10,500 stores and numerous e-commerce websites 19 countries. The Bentonville, Ark.-based company employs approximately 2.1 million associates worldwide. Walmart U.S. is No. 1 on Progressive Grocer’s 2023 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America, while its Sam’s Club division is No. 8. PG also named Walmart one of its Retailers of the Century.

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