IKEA Is Employing Drones To Track Inventory In Stores
By Mikelle Leow, 21 Mar 2023
In the wee hours, a crew of blue and yellow-clad robotics awakes and gets to work, combing warehouses to ensure every unit is accounted for. No, this is not the plot for a dystopian remake of Night at the Museum. It’s IKEA’s reality, and it’s looking pretty bright.
In an announcement, the furniture giant says it has employed its 100th autonomous drone to fly in IKEA stores and track inventory.
Back in 2021, IKEA’s parent company Ingka Group and Inter IKEA Group’s Supply Chain Development Team worked with indoor drone system company Verity to develop UAVs to streamline inventory management, which would take some of the tiring workload off human employees. To date, the 100 drones have made life easier in locations in Croatia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Switzerland, with the latest of them recruited in Belgium.
IKEA has entrusted more of these yellow and blue drones to help with logistics after learning that the technology “improves our co-workers’ wellbeing, lowers operational costs,” as well as enabled the company to be “more affordable and convenient for our customers,” notes Tolga Öncu, Head of Retail at Ingka Group.
Ingka Group will adopt more AI-powered technology “across the board” to improve customer fulfillment. Apart from deploying drones to measure stock, it says it could also engage robots to pick up goods. It’s a “genuine win-win for everybody,” Öncu describes, noting that the high-tech solutions serve everyone from employees to customers and the company.
For instance, the drones have helped create a “more ergonomic workplace” for IKEA employees, who would usually have to manually confirm each pallet, says Ingka Group.
Work for the drones starts late in the night, when nobody is around. The equipment soars from floor to ceiling to scan barcodes on boxes of more than 10,000 spots, immediately recording units that may be missing. The task would normally take humans three months to perform manually.
IKEA follows companies like Walmart and Amazon in their decisions to incorporate drones in their fulfillment processes, though it claims to be “the first retailer to use such solution successfully at scale for stock inventory.” See its drones at work in the video below.
[via BGR and DroneDJ, video and images via Ingka Group]