What does customer self-checkout have to do with shipping containers?
My point was on company culture which drives everything else. I have no idea what “know what they are doing” covers exactly because you can fall under that umbrella and still lose your company to competition. Ask Sears.
What does sales have to do with shipping? Is that your question? Because it is fundamental to both this thread and the shipping (ie: railroad) industry’s existence.
The more efficiently I can sell, the CHEAPer my products are, the more volume I can sell, the more I need to ship. That one lesson should be fundamental to shipping employees because it also drives client satisfaction with the shipper itself.
The faster and more efficient a railroad is with switching moves and the shipment the lower cost it is to ship the product. A cost of shipping a product is not just the price paid for shipping, it is the revenue and time value of money loss while that product sits in unsold inventory. So selection of the shipper itself if it is a shipper whose employees really do not care or are just there for a paycheck…can cost serious additional money to the shipper beyond the shipping cost paid out.
On a very related point the 3 for 1 stock split for Walmart was about sales it was not done for wealthy investors so they can work over the hard working blue collar guy. It was done so more Walmart employees working with CHEAP per hour rates can afford to buy the stock via the stock purchase plan. In return Walmart management expects additional motivation on the sales floor. Which translates into increased shipments if it happens. You can read the public statement by Management of Walmart…it is very clear what the intent was.
On the containers themselves (responding to croteaudd). Walmart is retail, JB Hunt is shipping. Lets see, how many retail store clients are there in the United States vs Shipping Clients. I will promote my brand accordingly was probably the decisions made there.
Backshop:
BOTH, while well intended, were costly and colossal failures.
If everybody was righteous (a perfect world), self-checkout and advertising on containers would work as intended. But, historically, people generally have a predisposition to be rotten and wicked.
Hence, they have difficulty in seeing other people’s viewpoints, the ‘ME FIRST” perspective, and that ultimately leads to violence and the collapse of a civilization and has been proven over and over again.
So, reality and cause-and-effect connects BOTH self-checkout and container advertising together!
That’s funny, Kroger has self-checkout and it’s a success. It must be the Walmart clientele. I couldn’t tell you since I won’t set foot in Walmart.
Sears went under precisely because they didn’t know the new market. They didn’t know what they were doing.
Anyone going into a Sears or Kmart after Sears bought them could see it.
Yikes! Onto another thread.[:|]
Wait a minute… why the hell would Walmart abandon their self-checkouts after just spending what is probably a fair amount on putting new scanners and signage in all the stores I’ve been in over the past couple of years – as far north as the Lake Erie shore, as far south as panhandle Florida?
I won’t wait in a Walmart line for some poor employee who was forced to do checkout duty (and take responsibility for the register) – I go to the first available spot, gun my items ( there are sometimes a couple that you have to run past the laser scanner rather than the laser gun, but that doesn’t take long) and then trot my stuff out past “exit security” which is one guy or gal checking a great many parallel stations.
I carefully studied Walmart’s program to implement and then maintain and upgrade their stockkeeping and computerized checkout systems. As far as I remember, Sam Walton was a very early adopter of integration between POS and restocking – every SKU had a minimum stock quantity, and very simple boilerplate reports on a regular basis would cue even untrained minimum-wage people to order restock quantity and then track the progress of warehouse pulling, transportation, and shelving. The store manager could pull fairly comprehensive reports of how the stock was selling seasonally or at particular times, and from that the company was able to build systems that could predict how to shift stock quantities, or adjust shelving or departments, to allow Walmart to do its job.
Which is the same kind of money pump as a convenience store. Typical inventory in one of those was no more than about $35,000 a decade or so ago (and wouldn’t be that much more than that now). But a good savvy C-store owner might be able to take several million off the repeated turn over the course of the year – and the faster he could get items to sell, and the faster he then restocked what sold, increased the effective velocity of money going through.
<
The impression that I’ve gotten about Walmart, and everyone else who is cutting back on self checkouts, is that the losses due to shoplifting are starting to compare evenly with the savings from not having cashiers.
Two places I regularly shop - a regional grocery chain and a big-box home improvement store, still offer both. There is always an attendant at the self checkouts, however, to assist. That’s truly the case at the home improvement store - essentially there’s one person manning a half dozen self checkouts, and they will jump in at the first indication you’re having an issue.
For myself, it depends on what I’m getting, and my mood. Sometimes it’s nice to just put stuff on the belt and let the cashier handle it. If it’s just a few small items, I’ll check myself out.
The home improvement store mans a checkout where lumber and the like is regularly handled - I’ll often go there.
I have been snowbirding in NE Florida - outside of WalMart - Publix and Winn-Dixie are the largest ‘independent’ grocers. At least at the Publix I frequent there are NO self check-out lanes, additional each open lane in addition to the ‘register operator’ there is also a bagger. At the Winn-Dixie I frequent there are four self check-out kiosks. If you use a conventional register you still have to bag your own.
Don’t forget Tyson, the major university, and all the Walmart suppliers.
If you haven’t been to NW Arkansas lately, you’re in for a surprise. One of my favorite cycling destinations, and there’s no shortage of things to see or places to eat when I get off the bike.