Walmart continues to push the boundaries of same-day delivery.
Walmart's U.S. division has delivered 4.4 billion items on the same or next day in the past 12 months, with about 20% of those items delivered within three hours, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said Thursday. This was stated at the morning financial results conference.
“Delivery times are getting faster and at the same time delivery costs are coming down,” McMillon said, noting that this reflects Amazon's recent success since regionalizing its fulfillment network. Walmart currently offers same-day delivery at more than 6,500 of his stores worldwide.
In the first quarter, Walmart improved one of its internal customer service metrics by nearly 900 basis points, thanks in part to delivery execution, known as its “Perfect Order” score.
“We measure ourselves in perfect order,” said John David Rainey, Walmart's executive vice president and chief financial officer. “And for us, the perfect order is whether you can come to our virtual store online and find what you want. Do you need to exchange them? If you say it will be delivered, will it be delivered?”
Walmart is ramping up delivery across the board. In March, the company introduced an on-demand early morning delivery service, delivering to customers' doorsteps as early as 7 a.m. and in as little as 30 minutes.
The company has also successfully expanded its drone delivery capabilities, revealing in January that it had expanded its program to cover up to 75 percent of Dallas-Fort Worth's population. The move solidifies Walmart as the company with the largest drone delivery footprint of any U.S. retailer, including stores in more than 30 towns and municipalities in the DFW metropolitan area. Two of his companies, on-demand drone delivery providers Wing and Zipline, are driving this expansion.
Walmart announced that it has been piloting drone deliveries over the past two years and has completed more than 20,000 safe deliveries.
“The size of our delivery business currently exceeds the size of our pickup and delivery business, and occupancy rates continue to be strong,” John Furner, president and CEO of Walmart US, said in a conference call. said.
The evolution of delivery capabilities comes as Walmart's U.S. e-commerce business continues to see strong growth, with a 22% jump in the first quarter. This strong quarter was highlighted by a 6% increase in sales to $161.5 billion and net income of $5.1 billion.
Delivery milestones aren't just happening in the US Same-day delivery orders in India grew over 150% in the quarter on Flipkart, and are now available in 20 major cities. Walmart also highlighted that in China, 55 million orders were delivered within one hour, while in Chile, 60% of e-commerce orders were delivered on the same day.
Walmart's logistics network continues to make advances in automation, and McMillon said on the conference call that the implementation of automated storage and retrieval systems within Walmart's distribution and fulfillment centers is “on track.”
After a 16-month proof of concept, Walmart deployed 19 Fox Robotics autonomous forklifts to its four high-tech DCs. Maurice Gray, general manager of Walmart's Brooksville, Fla., distribution center, said the retailer plans to expand the pilot until it evaluates its benefits.
Gray said FoxBot's autonomous forklifts are designed to complement automated storage and retrieval systems that catalog and store products, and fully automate warehouse loading docks.
FoxBot's proprietary AI and machine learning systems enable forklifts to detect pallet locations, stabilize picked loads, and make decisions about loading and unloading pallets, all of which are commonly caused by manual forklifts. helps avoid damage.
The retail giant continues to ramp up its warehouse network across the board, with the company opening its much-anticipated fourth high-tech fulfillment center, a 1.5 million square foot facility in Greencastle, Pennsylvania.
The warehouse is being built to double the storage capacity of a traditional Walmart fulfillment center and double the number of customer orders it can process each day.
The fulfillment center will serve customers and Walmart+ members in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, offering next-day or next-day delivery. It is expected to require 1,000 employees.
With the opening of a new fulfillment center, Walmart will close another facility in Pedrickstown, New Jersey, in June. Although the locations are approximately 270 miles apart, Walmart is offering employees who wish to transfer a $7,500 bonus and relocation.
America's largest retailer has already opened three next-generation fulfillment centers in Joliet, Illinois. Lancaster, Texas. McCordsville, Indiana. The company plans to open a fifth facility in Stockton, California in 2026.
