
Woodman’s Markets to deploy aisle-roving robots - apsec112
https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-financial/woodman-s-markets-deploy-aisle-roving-robots
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technothrasher
Our local Stop & Shop supermarkets deployed robots similar to this about a
year and a half ago, although all they do as far as I know is complain when
they find a mess somewhere. I found them irrationally annoying. I'm not sure
exactly why. But I've also noticed that lately they mostly sit in the corner
and don't actually patrol any longer.

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monksy
I wonder how the employees view this? The chain is an employee owned. Would
they be concerned over being replaced?

Also that name is pretty insidious. Considering that chain is a Wisconsin
based one... "Badger technologies" is based out of TN. Keep er moving (out of
there) [That was a joke and a pro-Wisconsin reference guy]

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chromaton
Wal-Mart in is using automatic floor sweeping robots with customers present.
They're made by Tennant with electronics by Brain Corp. You can buy them
through Grainger.

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mc32
I totally get the mis-priced items (but who puts prices on the containers
anyway, other than the shelf stickers), and I get the items which someone
might just put back on a random shelf, cuz people, but they know how much they
ordered, was delivered and received and they also know via receipts how much
they sold... so unless shrinkage is a big issue, they should know about stock
levels and what items are selling well and have low stock...

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anonAndOn
Taking inventory is the equivalent of month end close in accounting, eg do
your receipts match your accounts, and is a very tedious process that usually
requires a lot of manpower to do in a very short timeframe (just like
accounting!). Instead of having a bunch of staff wandering the aisles and
scanning SKU's for hours after the store closes, I presume the advantage is
the robot and its handler can do the job by themselves in less time for much
less cost in overtime.

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cableshaft
Yeah, I've worked for retail and restaurants during taking Inventory, it's a
pain in the butt and never a fun time, and it's more of a special circumstance
and not something that would really worry me about my job if I still worked
retail having gone through the process.

At the place I worked they didn't really hire anybody extra for it to begin
with, it was just an annoying extra responsibility you had to do once every
2-3 months.

That being said this could just be the precursor to even more employee
reducing measures, so it could still be a bit worrying for the future, but
just not having to deal with inventory I would think would be a relief as an
employee.

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chrischen
I'm assuming this is much more cost effective than networked cameras pointed
at the shelves, pressure plates, or other less futuristic methods?

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analog31
I shop at Woodman's, and can't imagine how a robot could navigate the chaos.
It's an experience. For instance huge families show up and push multiple carts
through the store, then load everything into a pickup truck.

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monksy
What about us FIBs who load up our cars with cheap liqour.

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bilbo0s
Liquor area has a separate entry from the main entry. Every woodman's is the
same that way. In any case, that means that the alcohol buyers are generally
out of the way.

The rest of the store is chaos though, that part is true.

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analog31
True. The separation may be related to the liquor laws. At least locally, they
have to stop selling liquor at 9 PM, Even grocery stores that sell liquor have
some sort of gate that they close at 9.

The chaos can be kind of fun when you're not worrying about the covid. They
had one-way aisles for a few weeks, then it looks like they simply gave up on
it. I can see the point of improving their data on location and stock levels.
They seem to be somewhat unique in that they will stock whatever is available,
so for instance some brands of canned goods come and go from month to month.
Now you'd think that bar codes would help, since their original purpose was to
automate the management of inventory. But honestly, running a supermarket
without losing your sanity is one of those mysteries that I will probably
never comprehend. The guy in charge seems to have an infinite amount of
energy.

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Animats
This could help make pick-from-retail shopping services work better. Make a
pass through the store every half hour and update what's out of stock for
online ordering.

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ivankirigin
But there is a backroom to restock the shelves which is the real inventory.
And that back room becomes the business when delivery goes mainstream. Some
robotics solutions are about building a whole warehouse for that store room to
fulfill online deliveries.

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Animats
If it's out of stock to the picker, it's out of stock to the customer,
regardless of whether the back room has more. The robot will report to the
back room when a restock is needed, but if restock hasn't happened yet, the
item is not saleable.

Webvan did pick-from-controlled-inventory 20 years ago. Worked fine, cost too
much because they didn't have enough market penetration. They had 3% in 30
cities, and they needed 30% in 3 cities. Amazon is getting into that,
cautiously.

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TrainedMonkey
Here is the link of how robots actually look like: [https://www.badger-
technologies.com/overview.html](https://www.badger-
technologies.com/overview.html)

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nimbius
thanks i feel like there should be a special place in the unemployment line
for writers that are so lazy they cant find a picture of a robot and instead
sub a stock image of some spilled prego like that adds something to the
article at all.

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chrischen
That's actually the official company website of this product.

