Progressive Grocer - October 2009 - (Page 114)

Equipment The latest tools of the trade Scaling By Joseph Tarnowski To make sure its HLX Service Scale delivered the best services for retailers, Hobart enlisted the help of a grocer that’s all about service. New Heights T he HLX Service Scale, manufactured by Troy, Ohio-based Hobart Corp., is an adaptable, versatile and scalable (pun intended) tool that can enhance the business of any retailer’s fresh food departments. “With Hobart being right up in Troy, we are a test site for them,” says Gridley. “For years, we have been working with them on all their generations of scales — back before They set out to design a scale that had a lot of functionality, yet was also open and nimble to accommodate future changes. The initial prototypes, Windows, many of the problems disappeared, particularly small bugs and integration issues. “Now, we have a proven Windows It’s Windows-based, so it easily integrates to most networks, and features several innovative functions that help boost sales, reduce shrink, and enhance productivity. What most in the industry don’t realize is that it was a grocer that was behind the development of many of the scale’s innovations. And most people in the industry know this retailer, especially its reputation for outstanding service. And for its Heavenly Ham, customers of which can be found all over the globe. Located just 20 miles from Hobart’s Troy, Ohio, headquarters, community-based independent Dorothy Lane Market has served as the foodservice equipment vendor’s incubator and beta site, often piloting prototype units that were assembled by hand. And Jack Gridley, Dorothy Lane’s VP of meat, seafood, deli and prepared foods, has been the brain behind many of the features retailers appreciate in Hobart’s foodservice equipment today.• Progressive Grocer • October 2009 The Hobart HLX Service Scale features a touchscreen interface that can access Dorothy Lane Market’s intranet, allowing associates to perform such tasks as ordering signs without leaving the department. they came out with the HLX. We pioneered wireless connectivity onto the network with their Quantum scales, moving from a wired to a completely wireless system. After that, they began picking our brains in terms of what we’d like to see in the next generation of scales, and so we began working together about five or six years ago.” however, ran on proprietary software, which was less expensive to develop, but wasn’t able to support the robust applications Gridley was looking for. And since it used proprietary software, future development of the scale’s features was limited to developers who knew its operating system. Gridley and his team recommended that Hobart go with the Windows operating system to run the new scale. Once they switched to operating system, XP, that our information technology (IT) people are familiar with, and it becomes an open platform that resides on our network,” says Gridley. “And since they are nodes on the network, instead of having a device that all we could do is weigh products on, we can make it functional for other things.” And since the scale is another PC on the network, as far as Dorothy Lane’s IT systems are concerned, users www.progressivegrocer.com http://www.progressivegrocer.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Progressive Grocer - October 2009

Progressive Grocer - October 2009