Article

21 April 2013

Title : Wired

Volume : -

Page : -

BARCODE KILLER

At a Tokyo bakery, a new type of cash register has an eye for bread.

JAPANESE BAKERIES ARE known for their myriad types of bread-sweet bean bun, tuna cheese bread, custard pastry-and lots of them look alike. So how do you train clerks to memorize the names and prices of more than a hundred varieties ? If you’re a popular bakery chain like Donq, where employee turnover is high, you don’t. One of its Tokyo locations now uses a system that relies on a smart cash register capable of identifying treats by sight rather than depending on a flunky cashier who can’t.

The solution wasn’t obvious right away. A pilot test at another Japanese bakery proved that offering more kinds of bread meant earning more dough, but employees couldn’t remember all the prices. So the shop tried wrapping each item in cellophane and slapping on a barcode sticker. Customer didn’t like their bread prepackaged, though, so sales dropped by two-thirds.

“ It’s impossible to put a barcode directly on the pastries,” says Minori Kambe of Brain Corporation, which spent four years developing the system at Donq. Called Bakery Scan, it’s a camera percehed above a backlit countertop. The software compares images of each snack to the those of all the goods for sale-it can even correctly identify one that’s a bit overdone. Once it finds a match, it cough up a price. Success rate : 98 percent.

Sure, this seems like a lot of effort for bean buns, but the researchers behind the technology say the premise could work with other items too, like fresh produce and medicine. The team at Brain hopes to market BakeryScan stateside soon ( for just $20,000 per machine). The ultimate goal : to replace the barcode entirely. – Lisa Freedman

No	Prefix	Base word	Suffix	New word	Meaning
1		Baker	y	Bakery	Toko roti
2		Memory	Ize	Memorize	Menghafalkan
3		Solute	Ion	Solution	Cara penyelesaian
4		Offer	ing	Offering	Penawaran
5	im	Possible		Impossible	Tidak mungkin
6		Corporate	Ion	Corporation	Perusahaan negara
7		Develop	Ing	Developing	Mengembangkan
8		Depend	Ing	Depending	Tergantung
9		Correct	Ly	Correctly	Dengan tepat
10		Identy		Identify	Mengenali
11		Mean	T	Meant	Bermaksud
12		Locate	Ion	Locations	Lokasi
13		Identy	Ing	Identifying	Mengidentifikasi
14		Wrap	Ing	Wrapping	Pembungkus
15		Slap	Ing	Slapping	Menampar,tamparan
16		Spend	T	Spent	Menghabiskan
17	Re	Place		Replace	Menggantikan
18		Custom	Er	Customer	Pelanggan
19		Over	Done	Overdone	Melakukan sesuatu berlebih-lebihan
20		Slap	Ing	Slapping	Menampar,tamparan
21		Spend	T	Spent	Menghabiskan
22		entire	Ly	Entirely	Semuanya