Nowadays supermarkets have become bigger. This means they
sell more products and in high volumes. The result is long queues and
overworked cashiers. The reason for long queues especially during peak shopping
times is that each product has to be scanned for the price at the counter.
What if the trolleys could be made smarter rather than just
be used for ferrying items. For instance instead of using ordinary barcodes to
store product and price information, they could use RFID tags that would transmit
the same information to a limited distance say a 1 meter radius.
The trolley is then fitted with a receiver that has a small
display. Each time an item is added or removed from the trolley the receiver updates
the total price of items in the trolley. This would result in customers
arriving at the till already knowing how much they are paying.
This eliminates the need to scan all the items as is the
current case so that cashiers will now just verify the price indicated on the
trolley, receive money and issue a receipt. The overall result is a fast moving
queue and satisfied customers.
The downside is that the trolleys have to be monitored and
repaired if they break down. They may also introduce the possibility of fraud
or loss of revenue if they malfunction. RFID tags also happen to be a little
expensive but given the volume of items in any supermarket economies of scale
can be applied to mass produce tags that will only be used once. What’s more the
technology can be extended to activities such as stock taking etc.
That said we have to evolve don’t we?
