On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:23:58 +0000, Frank Erskine wrote:

What's the alleged advantage of an automated checkout? Clearly it
does away with a humanoid (although they still need to be such around
for, say, alcohol purchases).

One humanoid can look after 4 or 6 self op checkouts, instead of just
the one they are sat at. It's pure profit motivation from the store,
it's nothing to do with customer service. Proper customer service
would have someone to unload your trolly, someone scanning, and
someone packing(*) into store (or your bags) and then back into the
trolly.

Which makes more profit? 1/4 of a person per checkout or 2 or three
people per checkout?

(*) And I mean trained in packing, not just stuffing things into the
bags willy nilly but placing neatly and tidyly in general product
categories and taking into account the robustness of the goods. Fruit
'n veg in one bag, hard heavy things at the bottom soft 'n squidy at
the top. Dairy/chilled in another again sorted by robustness, dry
goods another, bread and other soft goods another etc.

--
Cheers
Dave.