European premiere on the Saar

“A better service for the customer” is the argument presented in favour of this technology, which is new to the sector. “It will make things quicker and we can concentrate on the purchasing process,” says Walter Weber, the Praktiker board member responsible for cost control, organisation, information technology and accounting/finance. “50 per cent of DIY store customers want faster service at the till.”
Expected to speed things up for many customers: do-it-yourself at the first self-checkout in a European DIY store
The “smart” checkouts are expected to speed up waiting times considerably at peak times and weekends especially. The intention is to offer those customers with just a few items in their basket in particular the chance to complete the payment transaction more quickly. As part of the Metro Group, Praktiker can draw on a wealth of experience in this area: the group’s technology partner NCR has already installed more than 150 self-checkouts in Real hypermarkets and Extra supermarkets.
But the DIY product range has presented the till specialists with some entirely new challenges. For instance, to prevent customers from scanning a different, cheaper product than the one that they leave the store with, all products are weighed and the article data are compared with the weight details stored. It’s not that simple with plants, however, for the reason that they are watered differently according to the time of day and correspondingly exhibit different weights. The specialists found the answer to that problem too – and they didn’t have a lot of time to come up with a solution, for just two months separated the decision of the Praktiker board and implementation in Saarbrücken.
On the other hand, the Praktiker stores are not the first DIY stores that NCR has equipped with “smart” checkouts. The company has also installed self-checkout tills in 1 000 stores belonging to US and global market leader Home Depot.
The customer can choose menu prompts in German or English on the display.
The experience acquired there and from supermarket chains shows that customers accept the system. It’s by no means just technology-oriented younger people who scan their own purchases through the tills. And it’s not compulsory, either: “The conventional tills will continue to exist, of course,” says Walter Weber. “We will always have customers who wish to be served at the till.” In Saarbrücken, for example, two of the six original tills have been removed and replaced by four self-service…