Odd Lots · Thursday, September 10, 2026
Home Depot is leveraging technology, including upgraded video analytics with edge AI capabilities, to identify suspicious behavior and improve investigative efficiency. Scott Glenn discussed the limitations of current technology, like RFID, in Home Depot's large, steel-heavy stores, and the ongoing challenges of scaling solutions while balancing customer experience and security, especially concerning privacy concerns with facial recognition.
“We have more cases than we can investigate. And so for us, it's an efficiency play, right? So the more we can shorten the duration of these cases, like our typical ORC case takes about 70 days from discovery to closure to handing off to the police department.”
“The cameras that I do have, we are putting edge analytics around there that help us identify persons that were walking in this store and they were lingering in this space too long or they were avoiding associates or they were in a place where they shouldn't have been.”
“The signals are blocked by the steel. That's typically the way it works in our stores. It's more passive technology like that. There is an active version of RFID. That's out there. But again, it's typically... And it's not like they're not coming down. I mean, tag costs are nil at this point. That's not really the issue. It is truly the hardware capabilities to be able to put it everywhere you want, to be able to read the way you want it to. It's still a very expensive technology to this point.”