Walmart Shareholders

12 • Walmart Shareholders • 6.2.2019 chain." As an multichannel retailer, he said, Walmart is becoming more efficient at ensur- ing that customers can find what they want no matter when or how they choose to shop. Combining the two smaller distribution centers is more efficient, company officials said. Walmart will be able to move more prod- uct in fewer truckloads with the greater vol- ume of merchandise shipping from DC 7842. This will also help the retailer move freight faster and with better quality control. The building has 82 doors for receiving and 62 for shipping. Sitting on nearly 120 acres, there's enough parking space to accom- modate more than 1,000 trailers. On a tour of the facility after the ribbon-cut- ting, a guide pointed out the six rows of bright yellow shelving throughout the warehouse that rise high overhead. The building offers 40 feet of usable height for stacking pallets of merchandise, he said, compared with the 32 feet available in the typical distribution center. All of the equipment is fueled by hydro- gen, and "filling stations" throughout the warehouse serve the 147 forklifts that are powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen is a cleaner and more efficient energy source than other types of fuel, the tour guides said. At the receiving dock, footwear is unload- ed to one side and apparel to another. Islands of conveyor belts, chutes and sorting equip- ment dot the building's interior, rising up and twisting down and around like a carnival ride. Every item is unpacked, sorted for a par- ticular store and then repacked for shipping. An overhead box trolley system carries emp- ty boxes for packers to fill, seal and label for shipping to the appropriate store. Once the order for a store is completed, a worker puts it on the conveyor belt, which carries it to the shipping area. The distribution center has 30 shipping lanes, with capacity for 28 more. An extendable loader takes the boxes to within 4 feet of the truck for loading. Neal Maguire, assistant general manag- er of DC 7842, said worker safety is always the top consideration, and new employees are trained first in basic safety. Plus, he said the automation takes on much of the heavy lifting, easing the physical burden for workers. Fashion n Continued from Page 8 Mannequins display garments as Greg Foran, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., speaks Tuesday, March 5, 2019, during a grand opening for Walmart distribution center 7842 in Bentonville. NWA Democrat-Gazette/BEN GOFF @NWABENGOFF NORTHWEST ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF REPORT Walmart Inc. plans to hire 2,000 technolo- gy workers this year to support its ecommerce business and instore innovations, the company said in mid-January. A spokesman for the Bentonville retailer said Jan. 17 all the jobs will be in its Walmart Labs division. Headed by Jeremy King, the chief technology officer, Walmart Labs de- velops technologies that support the customer experience in stores and online. These entail "any technical capabilities that power our stores, website or app," the spokesman said. Walmart Labs is responsible for nearly all the innovations the customer sees, from robots that scrub floors to app features that enable online grocery ordering and faster checkout in stores. Software engineers, designers, data sci- entists, project managers and other "technol- ogists" are needed, the spokesman said. The new jobs will be spread across Walmart Labs' nine offices, which are in Bentonville; San Bruno and Sunnyvale in California's Silicon Valley; Carlsbad, Calif., near San Diego; Port- land, Ore.; Reston, Va.; Hoboken, N.J.; Dub- lin, Ireland; and Bangalore, India. King recently told Bloomberg Television that his division now employs about 7,500 people after hiring 1,700 last year. The retailer also is seeking a chief execu- tive officer for a "stealth company," the new- est startup in its Silicon Valley tech incubator, Store No. 8. Job duties include "building a business from scratch," working closely with Walmart's senior executives and serving as a "public champion" for the business. The job posting lists the ability to handle competitive threats as a key skill the successful candidate must have. Much of Walmart's recruiting for the Walmart Labs positions will take place on university campuses, the Walmart spokesman said. The company also works with the non- profit group Fast Forward, she said, hiring and mentoring people trying to re-enter the work- place after several years' absence. Cameron Smith, founder of a Rogers exec- utive recruiting firm, said the new jobs will be filled by current employees wanting to learn the tech side of retailing as well as tech work- ers from outside the company. "Finding these workers on both sides will involve heavy communications on expos- ing its internal and external labor pool to the amazing things that Walmart is doing with data," he said. Walmart's rapid growth in the 1990s was the result of its emphasis on the grocery line with the supercenter concept and its mastery of data, Smith said. "They gave away data to suppliers to run their businesses effectively," he said. "The 2019 equivalent is Walmart leveraging its trea- sure trove of consumer data to know how to win in the digital shopper customer journey. "Telling this story to the world will draw tech workers from both fields who want to solve relevant and exciting business problems in retail," he said. Walmart also must tell this story to stu- dents when recruiting on college campuses in order to compete with companies like Google in snaring top talent, Smith aid. As for the jobs that will be based in Ben- tonville, Smith concedes it can be tough to persuade professionals from other parts of the country, or the world, to move to Northwest Arkansas. However, once they arrive for the first visit, he said, "the region sells itself and most of them never leave." Walmart plans 2,000 hires for technology development

• Cover