Walmart Partnership With Symbotic; Will Be Bringing Robots To 25 Distribution Centers
- ByStartupStory | July 14, 2021
Today, the leading retail giant Walmart announced its latest partnership in robotics, teaming up with Massachusetts-based automation company Symbotic. Both of the companies today announced an extension of their relationship that will bring robotics to Walmart’s 25 regional distribution centers. The company says the implementation will take “several years” to complete. The deal follows a 2017 pilot that brought Symbotic’s autonomous robotic platform to Walmart’s distribution center in Brooksville, Florida, in an attempt to increase sorting, storage and unloading of merchandise. “Today’s digital transformation, along with evolving customer habits, is reshaping the retail industry,” Walmart’s Joe Metzger said in a statement. “To serve customers now and in the future, our company must provide the right tools and training to our associates so they can deliver the items our customers want, when they want them, with unmatched convenience. We are investing in our supply chain on an unprecedented scale to optimize that process from start to finish.”
Walmart has been involved in testing robots for years, and the retail giant is also planning to speed up some of its processes. However, as we have noted above, its results so far have been mixed. The most notable is the case of Bossa Nova Robotics. The startup gave up when Walmart ended its contract with the inventory robotics maker. However, Symbotic has a significantly stronger track record as the company has one of Walmart’s biggest competitors (Target) as its partner And while Walmart might be exploring the possibility of acquiring its own start-ups (in the manner of Amazon, which built its robotics wing on the Kiva Systems acquisition), it appears that existing ties could turn this deal into a major hurdle.
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