WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

WHY IT MATTERS: On the heals of recent technology deals between Ocado and Carrefour in France and Sobeys in Canada, this paper and others explain how the technology works.

HUMAN-LESS WAREHOUSE

The technology is akin to a huge vending machine, where products are stored in compartments that robots can access when required. More important is that this technology can apply to any product you can buy online, not only grocery. In fact, figuring grocery item picking is probably the most difficult product category - with 3 temperature items (room, cold, frozen) and lots of small and delicate products (think tomatoes and meat). This will help reduce the cost and errors of web order fulfilment, and potentially speed delivery to make 1hr delays possible. When coupled with robot manipulation and self-driving delivery vans, the days of human-free order preparation and delivery is fast approaching.

RETAIL ARMAGGEDON

This will revolutionize the way we think of retail and distribution by making the store useless. The value chain will become produce-warehouse-home.

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/grocery-4-0-ocado-reshapes-retail-grocery-with-robotics-and-automation/ 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iogFXDWqDak 

WHY IT MATTERS: robots are moving out of the factory floor to invade all other spaces - from parking to retail stores. Here a great example of a robots to handle a routine and very important task for retailers: identifying what is on store shelves so as to minimize the out of stock items and mapping store layout for order pickers (every store is different so picking items is often a nightmare). Of course, this will impact jobs - even though Walmart says it won't.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

We think of robots as fixed machines that assemble cars. However, with the advances in autonomous driving we may see an explosion of delivery robots. We have seen experiments with the use of drones to deliver products (Amazon and others) and now we are seeing self driving robots appear on the streets as it is much easier to get permits for those than it is for flying objects that can crash and hurt people. This is important because delivery remains the Achille's heel of eCommerce (slow, expensive): whoever cracks this problem and comes up with a low cost and economical solution will make a killing.