NRF’s final day featured a fireside chat led by Charles Ferland, Vice President and General Manager, Edge Computing and Communication Service Providers at Lenovo, Wesley Rhodes, VP of Technology Transformation and R&D at Kroger, and Azita Martin, VP & GM Artificial Intelligence for Retail and CPG at NVIDIA, exploring how “Kroger transforms the customer store experience with simulation, Edge and AI produced by Lenovo/NVIDIA.”

This discussion covered insights on Kroger’s notable transformation of customer store experiences with simulation, edge computing and AI using NVIDIA’s software and Lenovo’s technology portfolios.

Kroger’s partnership with Lenovo and NVIDIA sought to overcome in-store challenges such as shrinkage and labor loss. As a result, Kroger was able to reduce customer friction and stock losses at self-service checkouts with Everseen’s Visual AI™ platform enabled by Lenovo’s AI retail solutions, powerful Edge AI servers, and the NVIDIA Accelerated Computing AI Platform. Charles weighed in on how Lenovo’s AI Innovators centers – that connect customers with software vendors —provide insights and value to retailers looking to adopt AI technologies, such as Kroger.

Charles also pointed out that enabling data processing for retail use-cases has become an exciting innovation for edge computing recently, and that Lenovo’s global server market delivers on-site support for installation and repair of technologies in retail environments. In fact, Lenovo’s server line is one of the first to be certified with NVIDIA OVX. Through Lenovo’s ThinkEdge portfolio, retail environments experience optimal performance and security.

Showcased during the presentation, NVIDIA’s OVX Omniverse equips technologies to power digital twins enabling Kroger to visualize metrics such as customer queue times, test checkout configurations and more, allowing its stores to operate efficiently despite labor shortages. As explained during the NRF fireside chat, digital twins create a physically accurate, digital representation of the store that will be synchronized in real-time with the physical store. For Kroger, NVIDIA OVX works to display this representation.

Kroger’s partnership to integrate AI in retail stores has allowed stores to reduce redundancies, allowing stores to save labor and offer better customer service. Lenovo’s presence at NRF demonstrated the company’s enablement of these technologies to enhance the customer and associate experience.