Wal Mart Remove Self Checkouts

[Alpha8472]

Inventory workers are extremely prone to errors. They may under count many items. Scanning items at such a speed misses much.

[ClownLoach]

Inventory workers are extremely prone to errors. They may under count many items. Scanning an items at such a speed misses much.

With the turns of a high volume Walmart, inventory errors are not going to amount to a significant overall skew of the results. If they were supposed to count 6 widgets on the shelf and only entered 3 it won't matter much if the store lost 300 over the inventory accounting period. If anything the store is almost better off with a slight under count because it will get larger after inventory trucks and really fill up the shelves, boosting sales and potentially washing the count errors.

[veteran+]

Inventory workers are extremely prone to errors. They may under count many items. Scanning an items at such a speed misses much.

Yup, I have had discrepancies in the thousands (negative).

Recounts always found the money.

[ClownLoach]

Inventory workers are extremely prone to errors. They may under count many items. Scanning an items at such a speed misses much.

Yup, I have had discrepancies in the thousands (negative).

Recounts always found the money.

Same here, I have run or supervised hundreds of inventories. It doesn't change the fact that when the losses are accounted for, a store like Walmart has turned the same SKU hundreds of times. This means that as long as the store operated on some sort of cycle count or other such routine the vast majority of the losses were found before inventory day. The inventory itself is more a measurement of the store's operational integrity than the shrink itself. If the store was showing year to date losses of $100,000 and after the count it ballooned to $200,000 then the store obviously has poor operations as their inventory predictability/accuracy is only 50%. For a store like Walmart, losses are probably in the millions these days. So again as orders are made and on hand counts are corrected throughout the year it is very likely that 95% or more of the losses are already known before the count. If it's a bad count day then the crew will be wrong in the thousands of dollars or maybe even tens of thousands. But the years losses are in the millions anyway, you're talking about the predicted loss only changing a few percent.

The higher the volume of the store, the less important the actual inventory day count is. But that doesn't excuse the manager who must pursue researching and doing recounts as you're correct there is always thousands of dollars to find there. Almost every time I've taken over a "broken high shrink" store I found that the previous managers blew off the recounts and just accepted the inventory service's first count. Just doing an inventory fixed everything and usually found tens of thousands of dollars.

[storewanderer]

The self checkout removal project continues at this Kietzke Wal Mart in Reno. The large area of self checkouts around the grocery side of the store has been unwired and is being taken apart and will be physically removed within a day or two.

They still have about 10 belted self checkouts open. One of them has a "spark driver/Wal Mart+ only" sign and another has a "15 items or less" sign but the others are still open for any size order. Supposedly those lanes will be getting removed next but the store management is using them as long as they are still able to use them.

I think this is a major mistake and will backfire greatly.

[storewanderer]

Was at a couple of Wal Mart units today. These stores had previously posted "item limits" on self checkout.

The first store had these store made "20 items or less" signs posted all over ever since they started playing games regarding self checkout a few months ago- they had them attached to cones in front of the conveyor belt self checkouts, had a giant overhead sign/banner (I think they may have printed it on their photo printer or something) above the grocery express self checkouts which looked horrible and was attached high up to the top of the ceiling, and had boxes with signs attached piled around the pharmacy express self checkouts. This was a loss prevention project with all signs generated by loss prevention from what I heard. All of these signs are GONE and there is no longer any item limit.

The second store is 80% self checkouts, and recently (within the past few weeks) posted signs on all of them attached to the light posts that said 15 items or less. They have now removed all of those signs from the ones on the grocery side, but still have those signs attached to the ones down on the pharmacy side. I don't think they are regularly opening the ones on the pharmacy side so maybe they just forgot to remove those signs.

[Alpha8472]

Apparently district managers are very picky about cheap looking paper signs. If a sign needs to be posted it should be in color and professionally done or at least laminated with full color.

Putting an item limit would reduce sales numbers. That is the last thing Walmart would want.

[storewanderer]

Apparently district managers are very picky about cheap looking paper signs. If a sign needs to be posted it should be in color and professionally done or at least laminated with full color.

Putting an item limit would reduce sales numbers. That is the last thing Walmart would want.

This isn't the first time I've seen their loss prevention make signs like I saw at that one store. It happened another time at another store when they decided to go with mandatory receipt check required for all customers at exit. That went against corporate policy which is clear that they are only to check receipt on unbagged transactions and those signs weren't there long after a complaint was made.

[storewanderer]

Update on this store in Reno on Kietzke. The self checkouts that they were in the process of disassembling to remove- they are now in the process of reassembling them again and getting them opened back up. They have bags back on them already and are working on reconnecting them. They have not put the corral or merchandise surrounding them back up yet, so we will see what happens. I asked an employee about it and was told they "don't know what they are doing" but are going to "open those back up again to help with the lines while they figure it out."

[Alpha8472]

Walmart Neighborhood Markets in the San Francisco Bay Area are back to all self checkout in the evenings. There is one attendant at self checkout to check out alcohol at a compact full service register. No other cashier is on duty.

The non-supercenter Walmarts in the area have reopened self checkout with an employee scanning your items for you at each self checkout.