Taking Stock Of What’s In Stock With Retail Robots

Here’s a rule of thumb in brick and mortar retail: Out of stock, out of a sale.

If the inventory that customers want isn’t there, or cannot be found, well, they’ll go on to the next store, or click their way through Amazon.

One way to take stock of what’s in stock?  Get ready for the rise of the robots.  In retail, robots are making inroads bit by bit.

Make that … aisle by aisle.

In just a few of the latest examples,  Amazon has about 100,000 robots in its distribution centers globally.  Walmart said earlier this year that it would bring 1,500 autonomous floor-cleaning and 300 shelf scanning robots to its stores – among them several hundred robots from Bossa Nova Robotics, a firm based in Pennsylvania.

In an interview with Karen Webster, Martin Hitch, co-founder of Bossa Nova, said that robots have come a long way since he first got involved in the space more than a decade ago.

In his recounting of his career progression, back then robots were more plaything than a serious business tool and where the technical marvel of the day was a lifelike, interactive dinosaur.

As we approach the 2020s, he said, the rise of robotics has emulated, and, well, echoed, Amazon’s Echo.

At its simplest level, recounted Hitch, Amazon Echo responds when you ask it to, and blends quietly into the background when it is not needed.

Hitch told Webster that Bossa Nova spent time developing its technologies and getting ready to bring robotics to market, the firm examined use cases across everything from managed care to security to the home.

“It was retail that percolated to the top,” he said. The initial ideas were that a customer could come into a store environment and a robot would be on hand to help.

However, As Hitch noted, he and his colleagues quickly found out that the challenges of running a store may not lie at the point of customer interaction. The real hurdles lie behind the scenes, tied to inventory.

Taking the pulse of retailers, Bossa Nova found unanimous interest in solving what might be termed the “out of stock” problem — a pain point pervasive through the industry.

Bossa Nova’s findings show that, per a survey published by the company, 87 percent of corporate retail professionals report that inaccurate inventories are responsible for more lost revenue than theft.  As much as 73 percent of respondents said that inaccurate inventory forecasting is a “constant issue” where retailers have too much supply, or too little, to meet demand. Moreover, 65 percent cited an inability to track inventory through the supply chain, resulting in potential lost sales.

As for the embrace of robots, the company said that 76 percent of retailers say introducing robots in stores would boost employee productivity and 74 percent said inventory accuracy would improve, which in turn, would increase profits.

The Process

Hitch related to Webster that automating the inventory tracking, stocking and shelving processes would have a ripple effect of improving retail operations.  As he noted, there are still analog tasks in place when it comes to those functions — walk into any big-box retailer, he said, and you’re likely to see employees wielding handheld scanners checking prices and noting what’s in stock and out of stock.

Enter, then, the Bossa Nova robots, which are designed to embrace repetitive tasks, to move down the aisles, collect data, figure out what’s out of stock or misplaced, and feed that data into store operations — driving a more effective omnichannel experience.

Call it real-time capture of a retailer’s “state of shelf.”

Also, of course, real-time insight, for a retailer, is crucial in the age of Amazon, where shoppers expect to find what they want, when they want, instore, or ordering online to pick up in-store at a convenient time.

Hitch told Webster that brick and mortar locations could become increasingly attractive to consumers as part of the omnichannel journey — if robots can help make that journey a fulfilling one in real time.

Safety In The Aisles

Hitch noted that the robots are designed to operate safely around people, which is crucial since, of course, stores operate during the day and out-of-stock challenges can happen several times over the course of a day.

The robots, equipped with three-dimensional cameras and sensors, can sense store traffic (shoppers with carts, for example), stop or move out of the way. They’re designed to address the physical situation at hand and adjust, offering “green” and “red” glows that signal if they’re traveling or stationary.

One notable feature – or lack thereof — the robots do not talk. They are not designed to converse, eliminating the temptation for shoppers to stop and talk, perhaps jam the aisles or interrupt the robots’ job, which is, after all, to collect and transmit data.

The natural curiosity of shoppers and store staff abates rather quickly, said Hitch, and the robots blend into the commerce background within a matter of weeks. The comfort level increases as shoppers learn that the robots are there to make sure the products they want are in stock — and that they aren’t being followed.

As a result, as the robots take root and take stock of the state of the shelf, Hitch said that the bots have been finding more out of stocks and merchandising issues than can be found by human efforts alone.

“If you are out of stock, you are losing sale, so the immediate primary benefits is that we know this and can feed this into the supply chain, and the merchandise is either somewhere in the store, in a stockroom and can be put on the shelf immediately, or can be ordered,” he said.

The robots and the data that collect also can help clear up the confusion that comes when the store believes it has items that are in stock, are not selling — but have been misplaced or overlooked.

Armed with the data of scanning tens of thousands of items with speed and finding the items that need to be addressed, Hitch said there exists a critical role for humans — to react to the data, to restock, and with time freed from pinpointing the problems with out of stock items in the first place, engaging with the customer.

As for what’s next, he said that other things could be done with robots (Bossa Nova’s and others) to automate the retail environment. There are a few things that every robot needs, he said, and key among them are dynamically updated maps that change as stores change, in addition to inventory level data.

With all that in place, he said, there’s the potential to automate the picking of inventory tied to online orders — alerting staff to what needs to be picked up and when.

As he told Webster, “with the robots, you are speeding the time at which data can be analyzed and actioned … and you are putting product on the shelf that will recapture sales.”

He added that “we humans are not very good at menial repetitive tasks,” he said, noting of Bossa Nova that “we were given a very simple charge which is help us automate the finding of inventory problems. We can move the employee further down the line in the value chain and have the employees fixing the problems. We want people to be engaging with people.”