Walmart's AR app checkmarks the exact back-room box, cutting search to 42 seconds

In a June 2021 Fast Company report, Walmart debuts an augmented reality app for employees. A Supercenter stocks 120,000 items and holds about 15,000 boxes of products in the back room, but customers often take items off shelves before they can be restocked.

Existing software already signals employees in the back room with a list of items when a missing item is spotted or enough of it is scanned at checkout. But finding the exact box was a needle in a haystack. In the new app, an employee aims a phone at a wall of inventory and the app puts a green checkmark next to the right box.

Walmart tells Fast Company it used to take about two and a half minutes to find the right box; with the app, it takes about one third as long, an average of 42 seconds.

Customers grab items from shelves faster than staff can restock from the back room.

The stock system already knows what is out, so only the finding step was slow.

A phone camera makes the interface a simple task: aim at the shelf.

Add the missing last step to an existing system rather than rebuilding it: the system knew what was missing, the app finds where it is.

The article gives only Walmart's own timing figures (150 seconds down to 42) and no sales or in-stock results.