Thermal imaging takes heat off Tesco queues

High street supermarket Tesco believes thermal imaging technology designed to cut queues in store helped to grow the chain’s half-year profits to almost £1.1bn.

Chief executive Sir Terry Leahy says the Smartlane camera system is part of its ‘One in Front’ campaign that seeks to minimise waiting time for customers.

‘The heat seeking cameras sense the number of customers entering a store and predict the checkouts that need to be open in an hour,’ said Leahy.

‘We can monitor and manage the service customers get much more precisely, by customer, by store and by the minute.’

The Irisys Smartlane system uses ceiling mounted infra-red sensors above checkout lanes to detect the number and behaviour of customers at the checkouts.

It analyses behaviour and automatically calculates the average queue length, wait time and overall store performance. Displaying real-time queuing data on the shop floor enables the retailer to deploy staff to react quickly to potential queuing issues.

Attila Winstanley, productivity director, says ensuring the best service at checkouts is one of Tesco’s core disciplines and challenges.

‘Historically, we have manually captured data on queue lengths at the checkout, but accuracy levels were varied,’ she said. ‘Smartlane accurately captures performance in real time, allowing managers to deliver better levels of service.’

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