An ice cream maker has a staff of experienced and qualified people in their organization. They already had an excellent file server from Compaq and a Novell network. They wanted to automate their gift shop to handle bursts of sales activity.
It seems bus loads of people arrive to tour the ice cream plant. They depart through the gift shop where there are many souvenirs and mementos of the visit, including unique T-shirts.
The people are in a hurry to get back on the bus, so it's important to make the checkout line move as quickly as possible. Two sales stations, with hand held CCD scanners were installed. These stations were connected to the back office Novell Server.
Some of the items, like pencils, are just too small to be tagged with a bar code label. Others' like T-shirts, sell in such volumes, it isn't practical to tag them. They go right from the boxes to the sales counter and out the door. The solution is a laminated reference sheet beside each sales station with a bar code for these special items. The sheet is scanned for the label with the appropriate name.
The manufacturer also has more than 2,000 employees who buy from this gift shop. Rather than use cash, the company gives them a discount and deducts the sales from their paycheck. Each sale had to be recorded manually, sent to the accounting department, then posted for payroll deduction. This took time and resulted in more than a few errors.
The systems dealer imported the employee file into the names file and assigned each a unique account code. Sales are now started by first selecting the employee, entering the items, and then making the sale "On Account". These sales are posted automatically for payroll deduction. It's simple, easy, and error free. This is a benefit which will save money every day from now on.
They check their stock closely at least twice a year. The stock checklist speeds this up but they wanted it even better. They used a portable bar code scanner to accumulate stock quantities on hand. A report writer was used to develop a variance report which compares the file from the portable scanner with the inventory. The resulting printed report shows the items with quantity exceptions and the variation, in quantity and dollars.