[keanebean86]

I worked at 3 walmarts in 2 states over about 7 years. They all had issues with inventory.

Corporate has been trying to fix the issue for years with different technology. They bought into RFID tech pretty heavily but it didn't really work as advertised. It seems the plan was to interrogate tags as they come off the truck since they had readers on both sides of the loading dock. Even with my limited experience with RFIDs I can see that not working. Passive RFIDs are only reliable when you have line of sight. Active and semi-passive tags work far better but they're way more expensive. When unloading the truck you need to deal with box orientation, un-loader's watery bodies, and equipment. Now the readers look abandoned and in disrepair.

Later they re-purposed the Layaway system to assign cases/items to locations in the back room. It was an amazing idea but it's fundamentally flawed in a few ways.

  1. Adding and removing items is too slow and unreliable. The portable terminals lose connection or take seconds to process scans. Those seconds add up when scanning hundreds of boxes. 
  2. Each item/case requires a label that takes time to print
  3. Large quantities of unsold special items can fill precious backroom space. This requires hunting for holes to add new, normal items. 
  4. Lack of time results in corners being cut. Items are not scanned or they fall behind stacks of other boxes and are lost. 

Add in theft and items being left in the wrong place by customers and it's not hard to have a seriously messed up inventory.

What I would like to see is a store where all merchandise is kept in the stockroom. Customers scan bar-codes on the shelf or on displays. A team in the back picks the items from inventory and meets the customer at the door after payment is made. Of course that would require a major change to story layouts, staffing, and customer expectations so I doubt it will ever happen.

Edit: spelling errors

[DrScump]

Walmart was an early adopter of handheld on RF networks clear back to the early 1990s. I worked on integrating support for our database/4GL apps with Telxon and Symbol RF network devices (including portables and wearables) then.

[gonesilent]

Sears had a line of stores back in the early 90's like that. Everything in the store was a display and you took around a little clipboard. Name escapes me, maybe just a so-cal thing.

[currymj]

The idea dates back even further than that, to the failed but fascinating Keedoozle, the second venture attempted by Clarence Saunders, founder of Piggly Wiggly, after his financial ruin attempting to corner the market in his own stock.

You'd go around the store, your selections would be punched into a card, and at the front your food would be automatically delivered via conveyor belt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keedoozle

[DrScump]

The earliest warehouse shopping "clubs" worked sort of like this. Consumers Distributing, Best Products, Service Merchandise, DAK, etc.