Supermarket chain Walmart is offering its AI-powered logistics to other businesses.

This can enhance the efficiency of the middle kilometre, helping businesses keep desired products in stock.

For years, Walmart has used AI to create a more efficient supply chain, reducing emissions while helping ensure more of the items its customers want are available where, when and how they want them. Now, the company is making that same AI-powered logistics technology – Route Optimization – available to all businesses as software-as-a-service (SaaS) through Walmart Commerce Technologies.

“We have invested significant time, resources and operational knowhow into building Route Optimization, but that can be a barrier for many businesses,” said Anshu Bhardwaj, senior vice president at Walmart. “By adopting our at-scale, AI-powered tech, businesses can eliminate the need and expense of developing their own technology, and instead focus on what they do best – serve their customers.”

Route Optimization provides businesses of all sizes the use of AI-driven software to optimise driving routes, pack trailers efficiently and reduce distances travelled. Using this same custom technology, Walmart avoided 42 million kilograms of CO₂ by eliminating 48 million unnecessary kilometres driven and optimised routes to bypass 110,000 inefficient paths.

Now, Walmart is offering Route Optimization to other businesses to boost their own performance and make sure their customers can find what they are looking for by:

• Better planning for a truck’s multi-stop journey: AI-driven automated route mapping considers factors such as time, location and store delivery windows.
• Packing trailers in the most efficient way: not only increasing space but also helping ensure temperature-controlled items stay fresh.
• Ensuring stores receive deliveries on time: regardless of external variables, by leveraging weather and traffic patterns and quickly pivoting as needed.
• Strategically planning inventory pickup (backhauls): on return trips from deliveries to ensure trailers are never empty, ensuring efficiency and a greener footprint.
• Providing at-a-glance insights: such as trailer usage, trip time and distance travelled without cargo to help operations management teams make faster, more informed decisions.

Route Optimization (commerce.walmart.com/content/walmart-commerce-tech/en_us/our-solutions/route-optimization.html) is Walmart’s second turnkey, white-label offering, joining Store Assist (commerce.walmart.com/content/walmart-commerce-tech/en_us/our-solutions/store-assist.html), a SaaS technology that provides local fulfilment including shipping, pickup and delivery.

Each week, approximately 255 million shoppers visit more than 10,500 Walmart stores and numerous ecommerce web sites in 19 countries. With fiscal year 2024 revenue of $648bn, Walmart (corporate.walmart.com) employs approximately 2.1 million people worldwide.