Page 36 - HW Dec-Jan 2023

global eyes
Lowe’s continues exploring technology
WHILE AMERICA’S TECH sector is clearly feeling the effects of belt tightening, Lowe’s continues to explore technologies that may enhance its physical stores or its business in general.
Improving physical stores with virtual doubles – In September Lowe’s unveiled the home improvement retail industry’s first interactive store “digital twin” at Nvidia’s GTC developer conference.
Built by its Lowe’s Innovation Labs
team and leveraging NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise and created in NVIDIA’s Omniverse environment, Lowe’s “digital twin” uses its photorealistic virtual 3D product catalogue to create a virtual replica of a physical home improvement store.
The system allows store associates to visualise and interact with nearly all of a store’s digital data, giving them what Lowe’s calls “superpowers” to “optimise operations and localise plans to better serve customer needs.”
The “digital twin” fuses spatial data with other Lowe’s data, including product location and historical order information, and pulls all of these sources together into a visual package that can be accessed on a range of devices, from desktop computers to Magic Leap 2 AR headsets.
Lowe’s “digital twin” is currently live in two stores and areas that Lowe’s is currently exploring with its digital twin include reset and restocking support.
Wearing an AR headset, Lowe’s associates can see a hologram of the “digital twin” overlaid on top of the physical store so they can compare what a store shelf should look like versus what it actually looks like, and make sure it’s stocked with the right products in the right configurations.
Another exploratory use case is associate “X-ray vision,” the ability to gather and view information on obscured items on hard-to- reach shelves from ground level using an AR headset.
Store associates can also use the “digital twin’ to propose an improved planogram or product placement by visualising sales, foot traffic, shopper behaviour.
www.lowesinnovationlabs.com
Introducing Lowe’s Tech Hub – The following month, Lowe’s officially
opened a new 25-storey technology facility called Lowe’s Tech hub in Charlotte, North Carolina, not far from its corporate HQ.
Conceived as a centre of excellence
for up to 2,000 tech associates, the Tech Hub is “designed around innovation and collaboration,” and features nine workspace floors arranged in a series of 13 flexible “pods”.
There are also five amenity floors that include an innovation lab, a “Big Room Planning” multipurpose space and as
you’d expect with the tech sector, multiple game and social hub spaces, while Floor 25 includes a large event and activity space that opens onto a rooftop terrace.
“This is a big and exciting day for us here at Lowe’s. We started dreaming about this back in 2018 when I joined the company,” says Marvin Ellison, Lowe’s Chairman and CEO.
“We made the investment here because technology is the future of retail, and we knew we had to be cutting edge to compete and to take market share.”
https://corporate.lowes.com/
34 NZHJ | DECEMBER 2022/JANUARY 2023
MORE AT www.hardwarejournal.co.nz