Walmart Running Into Trouble as Its Super-Expensive Robots Can’t Handle the Realities of Warehouse Work: It's an automation "arms race."

Robots are more expensive and are less capable than people? What a surprise! Not. I saw that coming years ago… 🙄

Unfortunately the robots are substantially faster and more effective than humans. Can you run at ~45 mph?

The issue is complexity and that’s something that’s getting better over time.

Complexity is expensive.

Expensive isn’t really an issue though is it?

If I can guarantee you quadruple your revenue by doubling your expense, you’d take the deal no? That’s basically what these things do.

To be a bit more precise, is it about throughput or lead time? Because for throughput I imagine you can just have more workers, but for quicker shipping you need to do pick and pack in less time, rather than do a lot of them in a given time.

Throughput primarily, the bottleneck is still shipping. These systems do allow for picking/packing faster as well but from a logistics standpoint if you want more output you just need more trucks.

How does it help in getting more revenue then? Demand wouldn’t change, right?

Businesses tend to bank on demand for products being functionally infinite over the long term. Because of this it tends to be a safe bet that you’ll make more money the quicker, and cheaper, you can get products on shelves.

This has held pretty true thus far, though personally I have to wonder if there’s an upper limit. Human’s have to have a upper tolerance for buying junk right?