Big retailers’ futuristic AI algorithm means stock space for customer favorites is never “sold out”.

A WALMART executive has revealed how the retailer is using futuristic artificial intelligence technologies to ensure retail spaces for shopper favorites never “sell out”.
The retailer operates over 5,000 stores across the United States, including its Sam’s Club wholesale chain.

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This means there are many products to keep track of, but luckily Walmart has a system that can easily identify which products need to be refilled.
Automatic floor scrubbers can be found in the aisles of Sam’s Club stores, used not only to keep the store shiny but also to keep track of stock.
The robots use Inventory Intelligence Towers to take real-time pictures of every single item in the store.
These towers take over 20 million photos of products on store shelves every day.


“It means I can differentiate Kellogg’s Froot Loops from Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and the depth at which they’re stored on shelves,” Anshu Bhardwaj, Walmart’s senior vice president of tech strategy and commercialization, told CNBC.
“And when you think of a shelf, it doesn’t always have objects in the foreground.
“They could get staked in the back and then there’s shadows too,” added the manager.
To combat this problem, Walmart uses algorithms to distinguish the different brands and their stock locations.
The technician is able to take into account how much light there is in the store or how deep the shelf is with over 95 percent accuracy.
Customers’ favorite foods are available while shopping because the storeroom is automatically notified when a product reaches a predetermined level.
The algorithm is also able to alert a store associate to take pallets due for delivery that day straight to the store floor if nothing is in stock.
Bhardwaj said since Walmart started using this AI technology last year, employee productivity has increased by 15 percent.
“So we come full circle,” said Bhardwaj. “We never want to have an item sold out.”
The manager added that shoppers “generate all this breadcrumbs about what they like and want, and that allows us to improve the shopping experience.”
https://www.the-sun.com/tech/7737731/ai-technology-store-room-never-out-of-stock/ Big retailers’ futuristic AI algorithm means stock space for customer favorites is never “sold out”.