Diving brief:
- Walmart has deployed inventory tracking sensors throughout its supply chain through a collaboration with Wiliot, providing more data for the retailer’s artificial intelligence.
- Wiliot’s Internet of Things ambient sensor data aims to help Walmart improve its supply chain efficiency, inventory accuracy, and cold chain compliance with real-time insights into inventory levels and locations, according to a press release dated October 2.
- The sensors provide automated alerts and reduce manual tasks for employees, according to the release. They are currently deployed in 500 Walmart stores, with national expansion covering 4,600 locations and more than 40 distribution centers planned for 2026.
Dive overview:
Millions of Wiliot sensors, called Pixels, are already deployed on pallets moving from distribution centers to stores throughout Walmart’s supply chain, Julien Bellanger, president of Wiliot, said in an interview with Supply Chain Dive. The company ultimately aims to enable labeling at the case level for Walmart, rather than at the pallet level, so the retailer can track inventory in an even more granular manner, he added.
An image of Wiliot’s Internet of Things ambient sensor.
Courtesy of Wiliot
The sensors are particularly useful in cold chain applications, for example to ensure that products are quickly moved to a cooler once they reach a store, according to Bellanger. They also provide automatic signals that make it easier to know where a pallet is in real time.
“As you know, positive confirmation of receipts in the supply chain is very important,” he said. “No manual scanning, no paper trail, just an automatically created signal based on real data, which the supplier and Walmart will eventually capture.”
Wiliot’s sensors transmit inventory data to Walmart’s AI systems. The collaboration comes as Walmart intensifies its use of AI in its supply chain, with inventory management being a key focus area for the technology.
“Using Wiliot’s ambient IoT technology, combined with our AI systems, we are not only optimizing our supply chain to make faster, smarter inventory decisions, but we are also tackling one of the hardest problems in retail: knowing exactly what we own and where it is at any given moment,” Greg Cathey, Walmart’s senior vice president of transformation and innovation, said in the release.