This is a particularly difficult problem, one that I actually happen to be involved with at the moment.
The short answer is that crowdsourcing is thus far ineffective, as there is as yet no suitable reward for tracking down where every single obscure product is in each store (and it will vary from store to store, even within the same chains). This means it's up to each individual chain to create their own item locator system.
I'm in the department that handles the layout of the store's major hardware fixtures. Not quite merchandise-level, but some of our projects overlap projects that deal with this from time to time.
I know we've researched the RFID solution extensively, and last I heard it would require installation of high-powered RFID readers throughout all the stores, as well as buy-in from all our suppliers to include RFID in their product packaging, so it wasn't quite viable.
I think currently the plan is to "number" all the aisles (departments other than grocery get letter-number labels) and then have the store employees scan in all the items for each aisle. Last time I was in Store 100 in Bentonville they seemed to be piloting that.
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This is a particularly difficult problem, one that I actually happen to be involved with at the moment.
The short answer is that crowdsourcing is thus far ineffective, as there is as yet no suitable reward for tracking down where every single obscure product is in each store (and it will vary from store to store, even within the same chains). This means it's up to each individual chain to create their own item locator system.
Walmart is currently working on this.
Curious: are you involved with Walmart in the creation of the problem?
If so, are you guys using that RFID system that was being used for keeping tabs on stock levels at all times?
I'm in the department that handles the layout of the store's major hardware fixtures. Not quite merchandise-level, but some of our projects overlap projects that deal with this from time to time.
I know we've researched the RFID solution extensively, and last I heard it would require installation of high-powered RFID readers throughout all the stores, as well as buy-in from all our suppliers to include RFID in their product packaging, so it wasn't quite viable.
I think currently the plan is to "number" all the aisles (departments other than grocery get letter-number labels) and then have the store employees scan in all the items for each aisle. Last time I was in Store 100 in Bentonville they seemed to be piloting that.