Infrared Cameras & RFID Technology in Supermarkets

An industrial engineer is required to make a job or a process in any industry faster, easier and capable. The latest news in the industrial field is that Supermarket chain is using infrared cameras to reduce customer wait times and (Radio frequency identification) RFID for faster inventory flow. This technology will help the industrial engineers in long run.

This technology was before used by military and police to keep an eye on enemy and criminals. According to (Lariviere, 2013).  these cameras detect body heat are placed at the entrances and above cash registers at most of Kroger’s roughly 2,400 stores. Paired with in-house software that determines the number of lanes that need to be open, the technology has reduced the customer’s average wait time to 26 seconds. That compares with an average of four minutes before Kroger began installing the cameras in 2010. This technology is not very expensive.

It also includes software that estimates time spent by the people in the store based on day and time. The number of lanes needed is told by the system itself in 30-minute increments, and displays the information on monitors which are placed above the lanes. Managers working can easily see them and place the registrars accordingly.

 

Using this technology will help workers to manage the work assigned to them at a faster and easier pace. This technology can help big industries reduce expenditure on labor. This technology not only saves money spent on labor but also helps the labor to be more productive.

These cameras help detect number of people entering the store at a given time and estimate according to that in how much time the customer how entered the store will come to the registrar. This estimations is done on the bases of studies performed in past and the software made by Kroger’s IT department. Suppose a scenario that there is not enough staff at a regular day. Cameras detected some amount of customers coming in and estimated the need of registrars to minimize the wait time by the customers. By the estimations by the software now they will be able to put down staff on registrar and have time to put staff on registrar till the customer reaches registrar after shopping.

There are so many supermarket stores like Wal-Mart how are trying to install RFID technology. It helps workers not to scan each and every product. In the Barcode system they have to scan each and every product which takes lots of time. In RFID technology workers would not have to scan each and every product instead all products will scan automatically when the pass through the scanning machine because they have a small chip installed in them. It is estimated that it cost around 20 cents a chip and will save such an amount of time that total amount of money saved would be much greater than spent on using bar code technology.

The flow of inventory would be fast and there would be no inventory backlog. Everything would work in just in time and cost of inventory will go down. Both of the technologies save big dollars for the companies.

Lariviere, M. (2013, May 3). Using technology to reduce queues. Retrieved july 21, 2013, from http://operationsroom.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/using-technology-to-reduce-queues/.