I wonder why a large retailer like Walmart doesn't start incentivizing their suppliers to do this as well?
Some math.
-Assume a fixed 120 customers an hour
-Assume each customer buys 20 items
-1 minute for customer to pay + 1 minute total scanning time for all items = 30 customers / cashier / hour (4 cashiers needed)
-Assuming additional barcodes double the scanning time (seems reasonable to me from my experiences at Aldi):
-1 minute for customer to pay + 30 seconds scanning time = 40 customers / cashier / hour (3 cashiers needed)
Savings of $12 an hour ($8/hr + taxes, training, insurance, etc)
120 customers * 20 items per customer = 2400 items total in the hour
$12 savings / 2400 items = $0.005 per item savings
Obviously the assumptions were a bit simplistic, but couldn't Walmart offer their suppliers, say 10% of the estimated savings, $0.0005, per item to add a few more barcodes?
The suppliers consider the packaging to be a form of marketing/branding. They want it to look a certain way with key information, regulated or marketing, on various parts of it. The goods at my local grocer are packed with all kinds of info and graphics. Store brands often do the same thing. Customers love it much like they love variety on the shelves, symmetrical presentation, and interesting displays.
Aldi, like Costco, aims for a "no frills" segment that basically doesn't care how they place looks. They want to go in there, fine exactly what they need, get it cheap, and get it fast. This lets them do things like just drop boxes instead of neatly arrange products or cut beauty/info out of packaging in favor of barcodes. Ugly stuff that gets other segments to stop shopping at a place.
So, there's a few tradeoffs that apply before we even think about a company pushing vendors to do it.
Note: "Walmart offers their suppliers." They're same suppliers in many, but not all, cases. There's one or more companies that literally do nothing but put different names on the same stuff to make it look otherwise. Dirty, industry secret. ;)
The benefits only get really apparent when almost everything has easy to scan barcodes.
Also, presumably these suppliers will be supplying to competitors of Walmart, so it doesn't make sense for Walmart to fund their shared efficiency gains. Everyone would end up making the same gain, and Walmart wouldn't end up any further ahead of the competition.
I've actually just started seeing boxed products at Walmart where the UPC barcode runs up the entire side of the box, so they do appear to be grabbing this strategy. I can't remember the brand-name of these products, but they're rock-bottom cheap and come in pretty plain blue cardboard boxes.
Some math.
-Assume a fixed 120 customers an hour
-Assume each customer buys 20 items
-1 minute for customer to pay + 1 minute total scanning time for all items = 30 customers / cashier / hour (4 cashiers needed)
-Assuming additional barcodes double the scanning time (seems reasonable to me from my experiences at Aldi):
-1 minute for customer to pay + 30 seconds scanning time = 40 customers / cashier / hour (3 cashiers needed)
Savings of $12 an hour ($8/hr + taxes, training, insurance, etc)
120 customers * 20 items per customer = 2400 items total in the hour
$12 savings / 2400 items = $0.005 per item savings
Obviously the assumptions were a bit simplistic, but couldn't Walmart offer their suppliers, say 10% of the estimated savings, $0.0005, per item to add a few more barcodes?