Molson Hart

Wal-Mart produced ~$15B in cash flow in 2019. They also lost ~$5B to theft/shrinkage. If eliminated, cash flow would increase by >30% or the equivalent of an incremental ~$100B in sales. Automation is discussed extensively, but the potential benefits of machine vision are

Installing machine vision in your stores to reduce shrink in 2020 is like bringing a really long telephone cord with you so you can make phone calls away from home. The solution is e-commerce, not in store robotics and machine learning.

Getting customers to come to you in lieu of providing last mile distribution is a pretty good value proposition, as long at they pay for what they take.

Easiest way may be “no cash” allowed coupled with scanning anything that goes out the door charging it to card on file for customer who walked out with it. See AmazonGo.

Clever.