Some people who usually go shopping on the supermarket are probably have several troublesome problem, such as queuing just to pay your things, some things you want to buy but couldn’t seems to found it, even to a simple problem like knowing the price of a certain things. The trouble is also experienced by the employees of the supermarket, like how they have to check every shelf to make sure there are no empty shelf and how they have to count the inventory in the warehouse. METRO Group, as the reasearcher has the answer for this problem with Future Store. Although it’s still a concept, METRO Group dare to give an overview about Future Store with a video.
In this video, a concept was displayed of how a supermarket which is supported by a technology in form of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). RFID are attached to these products may show a variety of information about the product. In addition, RFID is also facilitate to do a price calculation, checking the content of your trolley, even to assist the employee to managing inventory in the warehouse. In addition to RFID, there are several Smart technology, such as Smart Store, Smart Fridge, and other Smart technology. This set of various technological innovations have collected into one system that is expected to facilitate the supermarket and its components (customer, employee self-service, distributor, warehouse, etc.).
Although the concept of Future Store is very promising in describing a hi-tech supermarket, not all of the things in the Future Store is a hi-tech. For example, when doing a restock on the shelf. In this case, although the transmission of information regarding the empty shelf sent via radio signals automatically, restock is not done automatically but by sending information to employees to restock. As we know, the word Future intimately associated with automation.
In addition, even though the concept of Future Store looks promising, this concept is not fully applied automatically. For example, when customers want to do a check-out of the goods, the customer is required to put one by one item that has been previously paid at the cashier into one scanner device. This scanner will scan the item and disable RFID signal on the item which then can be taken home by the customer. Of course this is a troublesome because the device can only detect one item only. Moreover, this concept is not much different from the concept of supermarkets in general are doing a scan barcodes. What distinguishes is only people who use a scanner that is the customer, not the cashier. In minutes later, there was another version of the Future Store resolve this inconvenience to scan automatically. If there is another version which is better, why should provide two versions of the check-out? I find the concept of the first check-out is not necessary to put in the video because the latter concept is much better.
However, I really liked the concept of the Future Store by METRO Group. Although some of the concepts in the Future Store already applied in most supermarkets, this concept looks very futuristic, such as Personal Assistant Store that can provide special offers and guides the direction to the shelf items sought by the customer. Or maybe warehousing concept that allows you to checking inventory automatically. All these things can certainly make customers served well.
RFID technology as the center of the concept utilizes radio frequency. Of course there is health issues for employees of Future Store that will continuously exposed to radio frequency every day. Unfortunately, there is no standard on how much radio frequency that can be tolerated per day. Surely as the proposer of Future Store, METRO Group is required to see the effect of RFID on human.
Overall, I welcome Future Store with a positive response. Although with all the shortcomings of the various sides, I still think that this concept should be applied in order to ease people when doing shopping. Hopefully in the future, this concept can be applied widely as soon as possible.
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