An automated system for sorting merchandise at a Walmart warehouse in Seymour, Ind.
Posted on 10/08/2026 7:27:50 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Machines programmed to sort merchandise in warehouses hit kinks with cardboard boxes and turkeys; automation push reaches ‘peak complexity’
An automated system for sorting merchandise at a Walmart warehouse in Seymour, Ind.
Walmart (WMT) has relied for years on more than 140,000 warehouse workers to unload trucks, forklift pallets of merchandise into warehouses, sort and store the goods on towering racks, then reverse the entire flow to send them out to stores and homes.
It isn’t an easy job. A worker might walk 20,000 steps a shift. It also isn’t all that complicated—unless you try to program robots to do it.
Consider the seemingly simple task called “breakpack”—removing items from cardboard boxes to send out individually. It’s a no-brainer for Walmart’s humans. But it turned into one of the many challenges bedeviling the company’s decadelong, multibillion-dollar quest to automate its warehouses.
Walmart and the robotics companies it hired to help searched in vain for a way to choreograph robots to sort merchandise into bins while zipping past warehouse workers, testing technology that either didn’t work or cost too much. Eventually, they designed small robots on wheels with motion and obstacle sensors and are now installing them in more than a dozen warehouses.
“We are kind of in this peak complexity,” said Rob Montgomery, head of supply-chain operations for Walmart U.S., who is overseeing the automation transition now under way at most of Walmart’s roughly 200 U.S. supply-chain buildings.
Problems have multiplied. The cardboard shipping boxes Walmart has used for years are too big for the automated systems. The miniature robots that shuttle goods break down too often. The systems can’t accommodate some oversize products, such as big bags of dog food.
Robots have been...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
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Wonder how often AI large language models and robots will go shopping at Walmart after getting off from work...someone has to pick up the slack for all the consumers who no longer have jobs.
Every time I come out of Walmart, I become more convinced they do not want me -- a shopper -- actually using their store.
Why would they want robot customers? Oh, wait; I understand!
A year or two ago my local Wally World began using a gigantic automated unmanned floor-washing machine during daytime hours. It lasted a week or two and was never seen again. Maybe they still use it overnight . . . I don’t know. That dang contraption took up nearly the entire aisle, beeping and flashing. The gigantic “we do the shopping for you” carts are almost as bad, but they at least have human drivers who try to stay out of shoppers’ way.
Hey, I know: Easy solution to this problem... Raise minimum wage again. Hundred and fifty an hour ought to fix it quickly.
Hey, I know: Easy solution to this problem... Raise minimum wage again. Hundred and fifty an hour ought to fix it quickly.
We toured both Mercedes and Porsche factories in Germany a month ago. Wonderful tours. I was surprised to see humans picking parts from bins per a pick list and loading them onto a similar robot delivery system. It was a robot tractor with collision avoidance pulling the trailer loaded with parts. It took the parts to the workstation where the worker attached them to the car being assembled. No robotic pickers -- just humans!
Based on this article, human jobs aren’t going away any time soon.
LOL...great meme! In other words, KISS.
What I hate the most is them pushing the work onto me, the customer.
When UPC codes came in, you suddenly had to empty your own shopping cart! Who else is old enough to remember when the checkers emptied your cart for you.
Now you have to empty your cart, bring your own bags, and sometimes bag your own groceries. And that’s if you can find a checker and not go through a self checkout line where you do it all.
When I was a kid, I remember the young men baggers at IGA and A&P taking the cart out to the car and putting the groceries into the trunk for Mom!
I miss those days of great customer service.
When I was a kid, I remember the young men baggers at IGA and A&P taking the cart out to the car and putting the groceries into the trunk for Mom!
When I was in high school, I worked one summer at Publix, and we took out the groceries to the car, and the managers would be on the roof observing to make sure we didn’t accept any tips.
I haven't set foot in a Walmart in over 18 years.
“What I hate the most is them pushing the work onto me, the customer”
Maybe they’ll get away with the co-pay scam model, co-pay at the register, and out the door.
Your office had at least one very cute “worker”.
Both Kroger and Wally World have human pickers and both home and curb unloading of your picked order.
And then they have the old guy at the door telling everyone they need to show him their receipt. And the sheep dutifully line up for permission to leave.
I walk right by with a smile and a wave. “Have a good evening.”
One told me that it was store policy for me to give up my Constitutional right to be secure in my property.
I told him that the moment I traded money for a product, it became my property and he didn’t have any right to make me prove my ownership.
“But it’s store property.” he replied.
“Your manager does not have the right to override my civil rights. Sorry. Have a good night.”
I wil do that at Sam’s Club because that’s part of the membership contract., but never at a regular store.
Doesn’t China do this well?
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