Check yourself out at Home Depot
Tuesday, December 3, 2002 Posted: 9:32 AM EST (1432 GMT)
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- The Home
Depot's do-it-yourself clientele can
now do it themselves at the
checkout counter as part of a
technology upgrade the company
promises will make for shorter lines
and faster service.
The touch-screen checkout counters have
been used in supermarkets since 1995.
Nationwide, more customers are
embracing self-scan checkouts at grocery
and discount stores, prompting big
chains to increase the number of
do-it-yourself registers.
But they'll be a first for a home
improvement store chain.
"It should add a lot of value to the
company because it will reduce the need
for additional personnel and increase
their ability to service their customers faster," said Nathan Lewis, an analyst with
Jackson Securities Inc. in Atlanta.
Moving from full-time to part-time
The technology also could help Home Depot with a proposal it announced earlier
this year to shift more employees from full-time to part-time status, Lewis said.
Four self-service checkout terminals are being set up in about 800 city locations to
replace two or three employee-operated stations. The company also is buying
performance software to assess cashiers' skills.
Sixty percent of Home Depot staff are full-time. The other 40 percent are part-time.
Company spokesman Don Harrison said the retailer's move to self-checkout is not
an attempt to cut staff.
"Nobody is losing a job or being displaced as a result of this," he said. "We can
always use help back in the aisles waiting on customers. Will it mean a shift toward
more part-time work? I don't know."
Holding customers' hands
The nation's largest home improvement store chain has partnered with NCR Corp.
for the equipment and Microsoft for its Windows software. The technology is called
FAST, for Front-end Accuracy and Service Transformation.
The Home Depot self-checkout terminals walk customers through the process, with
computerized voices talking to them as they scan their items. Customers can
choose between English or Spanish.
At one Atlanta Home Depot store, restaurant manager Mike Clark, 35, used the
self-checkout to buy a snow shovel and a rake in less than three minutes.
"I look at it like you are getting four machines for the price of one employee," Clark
said. "It's very efficient."
Optimal Robotics Corp. of Montreal sold the first self-checkout scanner in 1995, and
has since put more than 5,000 units in grocery and retail stores. |
