Decathlon will use robots for inventory in selected German branches in the future. The French sporting goods retailer announced on Tuesday that RFID technology will be used.
The automated inventory has so far been tested in a store in Ludwigshafen. In 2022, the project is to be expanded to ten more German branches. Previously, the inventory was done manually – with so-called “rackets” that recorded the labels of the goods. Tory’s RFID robot is designed to simplify this process and enable employees to focus more on advising.
After closing time, Tory will drive down the aisles of the branches and count the goods using an identification process using electromagnetic waves – the robot needs three and a half hours for this in an area of 4,300 square meters with 93,000 products.
Decathlon also hopes that the use of robots will bring advantages for customers: “Orders can be placed even more reliably thanks to the permanently correct inventory in the branches,” says Sven Neuheisel, project manager for the RFID robot at Decathlon Germany. “Our most important indicator of the success of the project is the availability of our products. Since the start of the test, this has been five percent higher in the Ludwigshafen branch than in comparable Decathlon branches.”
The RFID technology has been in use at Decathlon since 2009, previously it was used for inventory monitoring and self-checkout. Since then, all 75 of Decathlon’s own brands have been provided with RFID tags in production. Tory’s technology comes from the German company MetraLabs.