WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: warning! this article is not about your typical "robots will rule retail" or "everything has to be AI driven unless you die". Well, in some parts it is.

The reality check that retailers - and their technology vendors - must make is: retail is difficult, focused on the bottom line, with no appetite for innovation with short term results. Retail innovators must find a way to experiment while staying focussed on the bottom line.

Best quote: "‘I think the majority of the problems come from the unwillingness, perhaps the fear, of investing in something that
doesn’t automatically bring a load of cash onto your balance sheet."

WHY IT MATTERS: the scores and the ranking is not important. This list is meaningful because it shows just how broad and deep the automation has become in retail stores. Expect to see a lot of those in your local shopping destination.

WHY IT MATTERS: the acquisition of robotics for Ocado fulfillment centers could be seen as one more tech announcement. But buried in this Fortune article is this quote from Ocado CTO that summarizes the ultimate goal of grocery eCommerce: dark warehouses with robots doing all the work. 

This may sound very futuristic but in fact it is the consequence of the grocery eCommerce business model: the only way to make money is to have robots to the work that consumers do when pushing carts in the store.

WHY IT MATTERS: this is a huge step forward and a sign of the times: manufacturing automation. Fueled by digital, automation, and robots, this enables production of smaller batches economically. When this is rolled out at full scale - I assume it still requires development and lots of tweaking - we can expect retailers to shorten the time from idea to production. with eCommerce, it enables the make-to-order that was made popular by Dell computers in the late 1990s: onl;y build the computer when an order has been placed. Expand this idea to t-shirts and you can see why this new Alibaba production facility is so important...

WHY IT MATTERS: an article that summarizes many of the important trends of the retail transformation. Important note: this is pre-covid....

WHY IT MATTERS:  watch for robots to start making guest appearances in stores as covid post-pandemic distanciation come into effect - and as retailers have pressure to raise minimum wage. This report provides very good insights and examples of retailers that have already deployed robots.

WHY IT MATTERS: short white paper on what travel *may* look like in 20 years. I think it is idealistic and far fetched but there are elements in there that feel very probable (ie. renting clothes instead of packing your own, robots that carry your luggage, AR-VR to help with travel planning). Not saying if this future is good or bad, but will certainly be very digital. Thoughts?

WHY IT MATTERS: the price tag appears expensive but in 3 generations (5 years at 18 months per cycle) the price will be down to less than 10K$ (Moore's law). Companies should start to include robots in their strategic plans because they will be affordable in 5 years and everywhere in 10 years.

WHY IT MATTERS: read the article and listen to the video to see what university students can do these days in robotics. And follow the "beer stunt" video at the end for quite a laugh...

WHY IT MATTERS:  I've seen these robots at CES2020 (or was it NRF?) and they are quite impressive. The video in the article shows that having small robots work alongside humans is a reality today. You'll see in the video that they use a modified kinect camera to sense depth, devices that I've also seen at CES this year and years before. Applications are endless and relatively low cost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGYVsr-pBgw

WHY IT MATTERS: here we are, technologies that were in labs last year making its way into commercial applications. The robot dog from Boston Dynamics is the 1st viable robot as it can move around in "real world" - climbing stairs, walking on ground and uneven terrain, etc. Here just a prototype it uses AI to recognize people and calculate if they are keeping safe distances. Give it a few years and the tech may be autonomous (now it needs to be human controlled) and represent real solution for guarding... and surveillance. Look at the video in the article.

WHY IT MATTERS: covid crisis may further put pressure on the workforce. If you had a choice between a store with humans or robots that perform most mundaine tasks - cleaning floors & disinfecting area, providing help, checkout & payment, replenishment of shelves, ... - would you prefer the one with fewer possible infection vectors? 

WHY IT MATTERS: this diagram shows well that the next improvements will come from technologies that impact the real world. We thus will move from a digital transformation to a real world transformation. Am I already obsolete with digital transformation? *sad*

WHY IT MATTERS: will covid crisis accelerate the trend to robots in healthcare? I believe it will. This report provides a good run down of what is on the cutting edge.

WHY IT MATTERS: once we get over the health crisis, we will need to address the economic crisis. Key supply chain technologies will offer retailers and manufacturers solutions to reduce cost and their dependency on global trade fluctuations.

WHY IT MATTERS:  robots are leaving the factory floor to enter the workplace. First stop, warehouses. This new generation of autonomous robots can carry orders from one place to another, navigating against the human and robot traffic.

See this video that I shot at NRF2020: youtube.com

See this article I wrote about this (french): e-marketing.fr

See this article on these robots: ailatech.com

WHY IT MATTERS: prepare to see robots in stores and other public areas as wage increase and labour shortage for menial jobs increase. bossanova and badger robots already deployed in stores must find their place amongst the shoppers and this article explains what retailers are trying to keep shoppers from being mean with the machines...

WHY IT MATTERS: quelques-unes des innovations du récent salon NRF à New York.

WHY IT MATTERS: order fulfillment and delivery is the last remaining hurdle to eCommerce. Loblaws in Canada will pilot a micro-fulfillment solution from TakeOff that impressed me last year at Shoptalk. In short, they create an automated back-store where eCommerce orders are prepared with a huge amount of automation. The question remains whether the economics is better for micro-fulfillment or if centralized warehouse fulfillment with hub-and-spoke delivery is better suited for high volume / low margin eCommerce that grocery is about. Thus this "test" by Loblaws. Note that Sobeys has decided in favor of more centralized ocado-driven automated warehouse and Metro remains with the more traditional decentralized (and manual) store-based pick-pack-deliver process. Given the low volume of orders for online grocery in Canada I remain partisan of a store-based manual approach but the economics I got from TakeOff was promising. Below additional links if you want to read more about takeoff and ocado.

- http://fmcs.digital/blog/a-new-store-experience-windowless-automated-micro-warehouse-with-hyperlocal-presence-may-be-the-future-of-grocery-shopping-takeoff-solution-suggests-this-may-be-the-case-robots-ai/

- http://fmcs.digital/blog/video-of-the-inside-of-ocados-robotic-warehouse-where-thousands-of-robots-pack-groceries-retail-robots/

- https://www.takeoff.com/why-takeoff

WHY IT MATTERS: robots are entering hostile environment of construction sites. Here the autonomous robot that has been featured in funny and creepy videos in the past has been deployed to document construction projects over time. Couple this with drones that can film exterior shots and robots that facilitate carrying tools and dirt, you can expect the digital transformation to enter the physical world in a big way in coming years.

- boston dynamics robot videos: http://fmcs.digital/?s=boston

- kryole carry-all: https://k-ryole.com/Catalogue/chantier-chariot-electrique-manutention-sans-effort-anti-tms-pro-sqvt/

WHY IT MATTERS: technology is tackling manpower shortage in retail. Here an example of how cameras, robots and drones are leveraged to perform out-of-stock detection on store shelves. When you realize that certain store may have 25000 or more products, the time required to identify out-of-stocks for replenishment and the lost sales makes those technologies useful and cost effective.

WHY IT MATTERS: this is a big deal because the Boston Dynamics robots appear to be the advanced and versatile. The fact that they are made commercially available is significant after years of being research project. You have to be in the market for an early device with lots of limitations but, looking down the road a few years, one has to start planning for robots to start making their way into practical use cases in construction, etc. Plus the videos are just fun to watch!

WHY IT MATTERS: always good to look beyond digital transformation into practical applications of the digital technologies. In particular, #2,6,7 in the list. Here an extract from the #7 highlights an application of blockchain which we've been tracking for a while as a disruptive digital technology that has received a lot of bad press with the bitcoin debacle but that has real future...

"Together, a pair of technologies could reduce both food poisoning and food waste. The first, an innovative application of blockchain technology (better known for managing virtual currency) is beginning to solve the traceability problem. Enhanced food packaging, meanwhile, is providing new ways to determine whether foods have been stored at proper temperatures and whether they might have begun to spoil."

WHY IT MATTERS: reminds me of the joke: "Only one man and one dog are needed in a warehouse of the future. The dog is there to keep humans away from the place. The human is there to feed the dog." 

WHY IT MATTERS: the report is not available for free but the 42 slide summary is a great overview of key trends that are presented with observations and outcome.