Chinese autonomous mobile robot (AMR) company Geek+ is expanding into South America with its first robotics project, providing smart logistics to Walmart Chile, the largest supermarket chain in the country.
 
Walmart has 345 stores distributed across Chile under banners Liders Hiper, Lider Express, Superbodega Acuenta and Central Mayorista.
 
“After successful projects in Mexico and the USA and the opening of our Americas headquarters in San Diego, California, we are very pleased to land our first project in South America and accelerate our regional expansion,” said Mark Messina, COO of Geek+ Americas. “We are also excited to have been selected by Walmart Chile after a highly competitive tendering process, and look forward to providing their operations with more efficiency and flexibility through our goods-to-person system.”
 
Walmart has been celebrated for its agile supply chain operations and continues to invest in technology that can help it satisfy customer expectations, especially in regard to the accelerated growth of ecommerce and the need for technology that can enable responsive and efficient inventory management.
 
“We look forward to the cooperation with Geek+ as we seek to further streamline our warehouse operations,” said Ignacio Gómez, logistics technology director at Walmart Chile. “This is the first time we deploy AMRs in our warehouses, driven by the objectives of bringing flexibility and efficiency to our operations. As with the partnership seen with Geek+ in Walmart China, we are confident that this project too will be a success.”
 
The goods-to-person picking system, powered by Geek+ proprietary smart algorithms, uses P-series warehouse robots to eliminate redundant walking of the picking workers, improve picking accuracy and reduce labour intensity. The AI-driven system features robot task management, combined order optimisation and picking, inventory management, dynamic wave optimisation and adjustments of inventory layouts to increase efficiency.
 
Geek+ has 300 global customers and has deployed more than 10,000 robots worldwide. Founded in 2015, it has over 800 employees and is headquartered in Beijing, with offices in Germany, UK, USA, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.