Judging from the pictures they'll still use paper price labels. Why? It seems extremely arcane to still use paper price labels in 2017, especially for stores as big and centrally run as Walmart. With digital price labels you can update prices centrally across the whole country within seconds, and it costs basically nothing to implement too, when the labor cost of manually updating paper price labels are factored in.
> and it costs basically nothing to implement too.
I find that hard to believe, given the scale of Walmart's operations - they have close to 5000 stores, and who knows how much technical debt they have in their stocking/inventory systems.
> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers. ...which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots taking our jobs" angle here. If they consider the current level at which employees help customers in the aisles sufficient, then they'll be cutting jobs to match that level rather than "freeing up" employees to do more of it.
For the foreseable future, robots and chatbots will be poorer UX than speaking to a human. Since it's not adding value to their product it's obviously being done for cost cutting and scale reasons.
> the robots are 50% more efficient than a human doing the same task. They can also scan shelves three times more quickly and are a lot more accurate. Human employees can only scan shelves about twice a week. Personally, I want to see up-to-date retail stock mapping (that I can search) Walmart is testing a robot from Bossa Nova (Pittsburgh and SF) http://www.bossanova.com/ https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/boss…
> The robots are much more efficient than a human at the task of scanning store shelves.
Oh, my. This sentence gave me a real chuckle. But, then, I reflected. We're in for some interesting times. If the heuristic is whether not a robot is "more efficient" than a human then human's are going to be in short demand.
It seems interesting to me, that computers seem to be taking on managerial roles and humans are left with manual labor. The robot knows how to tell a human to fix a problem but doesn't know how to restock the shelves itself. Similarly, in warehouses, computers tell humans what to do, and the human's job is basically just to grab things. In the end, the robot is already higher on the ladder than the humans.
>The robot knows how to tell a human to fix a problem but doesn't know how to restock the shelves itself. [...] computers tell humans what to do, and the human's job is basically just to grab things.
Judging from the pictures they'll still use paper price labels. Why? It seems extremely arcane to still use paper price labels in 2017, especially for stores as big and centrally run as Walmart. With digital price labels you can update prices centrally across the whole country within seconds, and it costs basically nothing to implement too, when the labor cost of manually updating paper price labels are factored in.
> and it costs basically nothing to implement too. I find that hard to believe, given the scale of Walmart's operations - they have close to 5000 stores, and who knows how much technical debt they have in their stocking/inventory systems.
I clarified that I meant with labor taken into account.
I don't understand the technical debt argument though - if a robot can scan prices to check that they are correct, a display should be able to display the price without any issue. The prices are obviously accedible in a database.
> the robots are 50% more efficient than a human doing the same task. They can also scan shelves three times more quickly and are a lot more accurate. Human employees can only scan shelves about twice a week. Personally, I want to see up-to-date retail stock mapping (that I can search) Walmart is testing a robot from Bossa Nova (Pittsburgh and SF) http://www.bossanova.com/ https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/boss…
> Personally, I want to see up-to-date retail stock mapping (that I can search) Isn’t something Walmart doesn’t want you to have? Having a mapping means being more efficient when shopping in the store, which means less time in it and so less opportunities to buy things.
From iOS and Android apps you can search a for products in a specific store. It displays Aisle number and some broad stock information. Maps have been trialed as well. There are challenges with data quality to get maps to work well. Poor data quality is due to managers being able to move shelves around without updating central systems and stock living in multiple places within a store (same SKU). Locating consumers on a map has also been trialed with LED based indoor positioning. Walmart do try lots of stuff and work with lots of vendors. Rolling out to 4000+ stores is a multi-year challenge. See eReceipts, Savings Catcher, Scan'n'Go, Walmart Pay et al. Usually 3 years from pilot to chain.
> The robots are designed to free up store employees' time so they can use it to help customers. ...which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots taking our jobs" angle here. If they consider the current level at which employees help customers in the aisles sufficient, then they'll be cutting jobs to match that level rather than "freeing up" employees to do more of it.
> which is bullshit; Walmart just doesn't want the "robots taking our jobs" angle here
Some would say the "robots taking our jobs" angle is also bullshit.
Damn tractors/threshers/combines, taking all of our jobs....
Judging from the pictures they'll still use paper price labels. Why? It seems extremely arcane to still use paper price labels in 2017, especially for stores as big and centrally run as Walmart. With digital price labels you can update prices centrally across the whole country within seconds, and it costs basically nothing to implement too, when the labor cost of manually updating paper price labels are factored in.
At the very least you will need another little robot or human that goes by and verifies that the prices have actually been updated. I can't imagine the LCD price displayers will be super high reliable and built to last decades.