Walmart suppliers may experience tightening SQEP expectations as DC automation and robotics scale up. 8th & Walton’s Terry Clear and Joel Graham discuss how new packaging attributes, stricter pallet standards, and “problem freight” risks might impact your compliance and item setup as a supplier.
Lainie: We’re hearing that Walmart may be tightening SQEP compliance expectations, especially around how freight interacts with DC automation and robotics. With the move toward automated freight handling, how do you see these changes impacting suppliers?
Terry: Well, Lainie, the requirements are going to be tighter with Walmart moving to automation and robotics. It requires that suppliers present cases to Walmart and to the Walmart DCs in a much more standardized fashion. So I don’t believe any new defect categories will be added to SQEP. I believe that there may be additional sub-defects added that will be there because of the additional requirements for the automation.
Lainie: What do you think, Joel?
Joel: Yeah, I agree, Terry. And to that point today, even before automation, we’ve always had the issue of the pallet can’t be unloaded, it has to be hand stacked, whatever. And then that probably moves over to an area called problem freight. That problem freight area may just get a little bit more activity because of the robotics. And then additionally, in the item creation process, we’re seeing four new attributes being introduced at the trade item level. And those are specifically packaging material types (such as corrugate and paper), packaging features (such as tamper-resistant and fragile or this side up), and packaging type codes (such as box, bag, or bottle). I suspect that maybe those flags, those attributes may help the robotics understand this box needs to stay upright, or this box is in a bottle, so there’s pressure from the clamping of the robotics that may have an impact on that process.
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Lainie: Terry, do you have anything to add?
Terry: No, no. I think Joel nailed it there, and that’s what I talked about. No new defects, just a lower level or a tightening of the requirements so that when we build the item, these attributes get added to the item file. Then, when the robot goes to unload the truck, it understands what type of package it will be handling and may handle it differently depending on the materials.
Joel: Yeah, and agree, and what we all know and we’re all seeing it coming. Automation and robotics is not going anywhere. It’s just simply going to be increased.
