What: Walmart is setting up small, local, robot-staffed warehouses.

Why it is important: Fulfilment is a real competitive advantage. Best practices include speed and convenience. Could department stores use stores for fulfilment?

Walmart is planning to set up small local warehouses staffed with robots to handle surging online orders. The warehouses will be in or close to existing stores and will use robots to pick boxed items. More complex items will be picked by humans. The orders can then be picked up at the store by customers or by delivery workers.

Walmart also plans to experiment with automated pick-up systems that would present the goods at a hatch once a customer scanned a code on their smartphone. This effectively turns stores into micro-fulfilment centres which will cut the cost of the “last mile” delivery, the most expensive part of fulfilment. The move is seen as part of Walmart’s competition with Amazon which itself introduced a chain of grocery stores last year esigned to work as micro-fulfilment centres.

Walmart Presses Into Stores as Fulfillment Center Strategy 

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