Grocery Retail Lessons From The Coronavirus Outbreak For The Robotic Future

Robots are taking on a greater share of the work in some grocery stores during the coronavirus outbreak. From checking shelves for low stock to helping sanitation efforts, robots are filling in while an overwhelmed retail workforce tries to keep up with high demand. Looking ahead, there are already lessons from this experience that grocery stores can use.

Keeping the Shelves Stocked

The coronavirus outbreak revealed that keeping store shelves stocked consistently was a serious weakness for many retailers across the country. Although consumers can expect changes to happen to manufacturing and distribution processes in the future to prevent this problem from resurfacing, robots have also shown how they can help. Robots that could provide a quick scan of a shelf to determine what needs to be restocked proved to be valuable.

“Solutions like Tally, an autonomous shelf-scanning robot, assisted retailers by helping to establish a clear understanding as to what was happening on store shelves in real-time during the outbreak. Tally will also allow the supply chain to ease back into normal operations and prevent distortions in the inventory in the future,” Brad Bogolea, co-founder and CEO of Simbe Robotics, said.

Bogolea believes the effects of the coronavirus outbreak will be felt broadly across the retail industry for years to come. As the initial shock of shelter-in-place subsides, and consumer purchasing habits return to normal, companies and retailers will begin to return back to pre-pandemic volumes of inventory for most products in stores. However, they have learned important lessons about keeping those shelves stocked in the future.

Long-Term Robot Solutions

Phil Duffy, vice president of product management and marketing at Brain Corp, thinks retailers and other businesses will come out of this crisis with a different perspective on cleanliness, automation and robots. Instead of viewing robotics purely through the investment lens, they will view it as vital for their long-term success.

“Businesses are quickly realizing that robots provide an immense value in bridging the demands on workers, smoothing variability in day-to-day operations and helping complete mission-critical tasks like floor cleaning and restocking. Robots can, and do, deliver much-needed support for everyday workers,” Duffy said.

Over time, robots can give businesses the flexibility to address labor challenges, absenteeism, rising costs and more. From a societal standpoint, robots may move up several notches among consumers as they have seen them operating in stores or warehouses by providing essential support for workers.

“We believe people are already developing a more positive attitude toward robots. As we have seen in the last few weeks, humans need help during a crisis like this one, and autonomous mobile robots have the ability to support them in meaningful ways, like BrainOS-powered robots cleaning store floors. We still need a human involved, but we will be more effective if we bring in robots to help us with tasks they are good at, such as floor cleaning and moving inventory, so that humans can focus on other tasks that robots are not able to do or do not do well,” Duffy said.

The crisis showed that there were not enough people to fill essential roles in grocery stores. In addition, it revealed that robots were not taking jobs but were fulfilling work that no one else had time to do.

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