Elaborating on Vending Machine Techniques

As one of the most common vending business features, category management is a system designed to enable you to take advantage of market research in selection of products fro your Planet Antares vending machines.
Designing a Plano gram will be an integral part of category management and involves three basic steps.

a) Identification of product categories
b) Space allocation to each category
c) Deciding on specific products for each category

a smart and effective way will be categorization of the above into smaller categories. This is a judgment issue. Actually, it is easier to do a planogram if there is lesser number of categories. Still the more categories identified, more the planogram will ensure variety.

The next step involves allocation of space in the Planet Antares vending machine. At least one facing should be available for each category. The number of facings will depend on the category sales and how the products fit into the shelf.

After this comes the product selection. This is a difficult task and needs consideration regarding:

Core products
These are items that sell consistently in all machines and represent 20% of the total product mix.

Cycle products
These are filled in each machine during the menu cycle but changed between such cycles. Majority of the products constitute cycle products.

Choice products
These are items that can be provided for a particular location to meet specific requirements. These are usually less than 20% of the product selection.

Separate Plano grams can also be created for different accounts according to their nature and requirements. Overall, a Plano gram gives you control over what products to be included in the vending machines. In the absence of such techniques, there will be no efficiency in operations as drivers will use personal preferences to save time.