Walmart’s multibillion-dollar effort to replace human workers with robots is reportedly running into problems as machines struggle to transport dog food and Thanksgiving turkeys or handle cardboard boxes.
A simple task called “breakpacking” — when workers remove items from cardboard boxes to ship them individually — is easy for Walmart’s more than 140,000 warehouse workers, who also unload trucks, operate forklifts, sort and store goods on shelves and dispatch shipments.
But that’s a challenge for new warehouse robots, which are too small to carry and unload the same boxes, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
It may seem like a simple solution: replace the boxes. And that’s what Walmart plans to do. But the world’s largest retail chain has used the same cardboard boxes for more than two decades, urging workers to reuse the boxes to save costs.
Now Walmart plans to throw all of those boxes — which cost an average of $1 each — in the trash, replacing them with new boxes that are 1 ½ inches shorter and must be taped shut, a new step that will cost more money, the report says.
Philip McIlrath, the manager of a clothing warehouse in Indiana using the new boxes, told the Journal it’s “a small change,” but for workers, “it makes a big difference to their daily routine.” He argued that the new boxes would ultimately reduce storage time, which would reduce labor costs.
Walmart did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The small robots, which move on wheels through warehouses using motion sensors, have trouble containing heavy or oversized objects, like turkeys — a problem that emerged a few years ago, just before the Thanksgiving rush, according to the report.
Workers at a newly automated grocery warehouse in California noticed the machine’s robotic arms digging through large frozen turkeys. This required a move to nearby grocery warehouses, which facilitated turkey shipments to physical stores.
The Brooksville, Florida warehouse, Walmart’s automation test site, is now almost “fully automated,” according to Rob Montgomery, manager of supply chain operations at Walmart US, overseeing automation at nearly 200 sites.
About 80 percent of Brooksville’s inventory is moved automatically. But robotics still struggles to handle the remaining 20%, which includes heavy objects like big-screen TVs and dog food.
Another problem weighing on the deployment of automation is the finicky technical problems of robots. The robots — made by Symbotic, a Massachusetts robotics company — frequently break down or require maintenance, even because of something as minor as a buildup of dust, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Symbotic said less than 10% of robots were being repaired at any point last year, and that percentage has since dropped to about 5%.
“We’re kind of in this peak of complexity,” Montgomery told the Journal.
Meanwhile, automation has driven up costs, with monthly electric bills at automated grocery stores reaching $800,000 or more — compared to about $250,000 a month when operations were mostly manual, the Journal reported, citing an anonymous source.
Walmart expects its automation spending to peak this year and next, but it also believes the new technology will eventually require fewer warehouse workers, which will reduce costs; process more inventory at a faster pace; and limit the frequency of stock shortages.
The company said it would still need human workers for some tasks, like unloading trailers, as well as to work on the robotic systems.
Company executives also said layoffs would not be necessary because warehouses experience very high employee turnover.
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