Article

Dissecting self-checkout security at Wincor World 14

Sessions during the trade fair address the relationship between self-checkout and shrinkage.

January 31, 2014 by Natalie Gagliordi — Editor of KioskMarketplace.com, Networld Media Group

Self-checkout technology had an interesting thread of attention this year's Wincor World trade fair in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany. Solutions manufacturer Wincor Nixdorf not only displayed its latest fleet of retail-focused terminals, but it also encouraged debate on the technology's pros and cons and discussion on how to improve in-store antitheft measures.

Self-checkout deployments are growing (to the chagrin of some consumers). According to the consulting firm RBR, there were 26,800 shipments of self-checkout terminals globally in 2012; 35,400 were forecasted for 2013; and the global installed base of self-checkout terminals could reach 320,000 by 2018. Simply put — self-checkout solution providers could be in for a sales windfall.

But even as manufacturers such as Wincor strive to perfect the self-checkout terminal, a seemingly endless swath of theft and customer experience concerns continue to plague the technology's reputation.

During a Wincor World session hosted by Julian Niblett, director of the retail consulting firm Inside Ops, the inevitable self-checkout/theft debate took center stage during the session's Q&A.

"Some retailers see it [self-checkout] as a loss issue," Niblett said. "The hard reality is that if you are going to steal something, you go to the corner and shove it up your jumper, you don't go and try to fool with a piece of technology to pretend to cash out with a camera above and attendants in the lane who are watching what's going on."

Niblett did not dismiss the concerns of self-checkout theft entirely, but noted from his own experience in retail that shrinkage is half internal/half external, and that self-checkout is not specifically the cause of it.

"The broad use of self-checkout doubled in the last four years," he said. "If it really was a massive area of loss you wouldn't see its prevalence — and it's only going to get bigger."

Supplemental technology

For retailers looking to give self-checkout lanes an extra boost of security beyond the sensors and weight management database, there are solutions such as StopLift, a video analytics system that detects theft at the self-checkout through image recognition.

Malay Kundu, StopLift's founder and CEO, hosted a Wincor World session that gave a taste of the system's detection power and how it's not only cutting theft, but also saving the customer's sanity. 

How does it work? The software watches the customer and their interactions with the objects they are scanning, while at the same time getting a live feed from the POS. It then uses that data to detect anomalies. The key challenge in that process is minimalizing the amount of machine and attendant intervention when an anomaly is detected, thus lessening the disturbing frequency of customers hearing "please place the items in the bagging area" or "attendant has been notified to assist you."

"We want to use the same measures that are used to prevent theft to determine legitimacy," Kundu said. "The basic premise is that two senses are better than one. Self-checkout has touch, with weight, so we want to complement that with sight. Putting all of those together gives better accuracy." 

So the key challenge to that multisensory vision process is getting it to accurately reduce false intervention. The way StopLift attempts to accomplish that fete is to enable a self-checkout system to identify common items that are flagged for a weight mismatch. Kundu said that for those particular items, the retailer can tell the system that they have more confidence in the weight database and less on the vision, and vice-versa, ultimately reducing the amount of attendant and machine intervention. 

Bottom line

Although the grocery segment will continue to account for most deployments of self-checkout units, RBR reasearch suggests the future will see a broader range of retailers implementing the technology. Many new projects will be in the general merchandise sector, notably in mass merchandisers and certain speciality retail subsegments. Antitheft measures will need to adapt to that broader range of retailers in order to keep secuirty concerns at bay.

As the second-largest supplier of self-checkout terminals, Wincor Nixdorf will be tasked with creating technology that minimalizes theft concerns and ensures that both security and customer experience are buttoned tight.

Read more about self-checkout.

Image via flickr.