Is Home Depot’s Expedited Checkout Lean?

I think this would fall more under the TOC umbrella of increasing throughput by exploiting the bottleneck. People still have to wait (waste)…but by pre-scanning your order they can relieve the bottleneck and get the cash quicker.

I would not characterize this process change as being Lean. It’s merely using an additional person to handle the same capacity but adding additional steps (handoffs, scanning, handing out of cards), materials (production of scanned cards), and information (opportunities for missed scanned items appears).

This provides the appearance of reducing waiting time but the same could be done if that scanner was instead opening and running a register/checkout and cutting wait time in half through doubling of handling capacity. It makes people feel better and less stagnant but the time saved is not as strong as it could be.

Fascinating discussion, Ron. But, is there a different way to frame the question?

“Lean” is not a state of being. It’s not a matter of black and white, or of yes vs. no. Lean is an ideal that we strive to achieve but may never reach, which is what drives us to improve. The discussion becomes, to what degree is this change a step in the direction of the Lean ideal? The definition of ideal, when applied to payment for items purchased, is an interesting one in and of itself. If we assume, at a high level, that the ideal process is one in that produces the highest quality, at the lowest cost with the shortest lead time, then the jury may still be out. It is likely that lead time has improved, likely at the expense of cost and without an understanding to the impact of quality.

I am not to worried about the specific label as it does improve the client experience. I am sure we agree that waiting in a queue is wasteful of our time. The checkout process is a bottleneck and HD have simply attempted to balance the loading by moving the scanning upstream. The clients get a little more valued interaction with staff and the final payment process moves more quickly. The idea of paying the scanner operator certainly has some merit (unless someone requires change) but really is the equivalent of adding more checkouts. The current version of their solution allows each station to be proficient at their specialty. It would be perceived as better for customers and that should translate quickly into better for HD.

Well it’s expediting. It’s a form of self-checkout. Stop and Shop stores in the Northeast just give a hand-held scanner to the customer. They do use a card (customer club card) and so the customer can scan their purchases AS they pick it up. Then you do not need to hire scanner holders, which seems more like a “lean” step I suppose.
Overall, this stuff is a transition step to a different checkout model, one that will have RFID in every item and just passing by or through an antenna set checks the items.

The objection heard all of the time is how to watch for theft? Somebody mentioned a “checker” at the door? That’s what they do at Sams Club. Just a deterrent to theft.

I have wondered WHY the check-outs are just in the open, and aren’t arranged so they go right out the door. Instead they have this huge foyer of everyone wandering around, where the dishonest can attempt to blend in and exit. Why? As a customer, I would rather this. I have been in one of the local Lowes, where the check-out area IS right up against an (not “the” but “an”) exit, they don’t have “checkers” at the door.