Case Study - Mat på Jobbet™ Svenska AB

The company Mat på Jobbet™ Svenska AB is a Swedish company that was founded in 1995 and today has approximately 30 employees. The company’s customers are located in the larger Stockholm area, Uppsala, Helsingborg, Landskrona, Lund and Malmö, and they are looking to expand into new markets as well.

What it is Mat på Jobbet™ installs self-service units in the lunchroom of businesses and provides each employee with their own charge card to be used for buying lunch or a snack as well as beverages without having to leave the workplace. This little ‘convenience store’ is comprised of refrigerator/ freezers filled with food and drink items, microwave ovens, charge card terminals/ receipt printers and a bar code reader. Maintenance, replenishing the food and beverages and cleaning the units is all taken care of continually by Mat på Jobbet™.

Mat på Jobbet™ adapts the product selection to the wishes of the employees. A suggestion box is provided where the employees can make their desires known and this box is emptied every time Mat på Jobbet™ services the convenience store. All of the food and beverage items are well-known brands and come from well-known suppliers.

The main warehouse of Mat på Jobbet™ is located in Stockholm, and the items are transported to the customer companies in refrigerated vehicles in an unbroken chain of temperature control. Mat på Jobbet™ has a taste guarantee, which means that if a product is not to the employee's satisfaction, then their account will be credited the amount of the item. In addition, Mat på Jobbet™ removes items from the refrigerator whose “best before” dates have expired.

How it Works
Employees run their personal charge card through the terminal provided to access the refrigerator/freezer and remove products for consumption. These items must be registered with the help of a bar code reader by simply scanning the bar codes on the products. The purchase is then registered to that employee. Every month the customer company is sent a statement showing every employee’s purchases, and the right amount is deducted from their salary. If the customer company wishes, Mat på Jobbet™ can deduct the amount directly from the employees' salary
accounts (a direct debit).

The Heron™ Bar Code Reader
Datalogic’s business partner, DataFångst Svenska AB, supplied Mat på Jobbet™ with the Heron™ bar code readers for this application. DataFångst Svenska is a fast growing Swedish company in the Automatic Identification (AutoID) sector that helps customers in the industrial and retail industries to streamline their organizations by means of lower stock levels, better flow of materials, increased data security and more.

Previously, bar code readers from other manufacturers were used by Mat på Jobbet™ for this application. But since certain codes are difficult to read, such as codes on soda cans that reflect light, a reader with special features was needed. They decided on the Heron™ from Datalogic, which is able to read the difficult codes and is also ergonomically designed and has the green spot, which visibly shows when a code has been read successfully.

The replacement of all the readers in use began in the beginning of 2005. The Heron™ bar code reader is connected via a RS232 cable to the charge card terminal/ receipt printer. Every night the card terminal communicates through GSM with Mat på Jobbet’s™ self-developed business system and updates all the employees' balances.

“Our customers are not used to using bar code readers. It is, therefore, important that the reader must be easy to use and show clearly that the code has been read. The Heron is just that kind of reader,” states Jonas Enqvist, operations manager, who is very pleased with the new readers.

Case Study - Admenta Italia Spa

Admenta Italia Spa is the Italian holding company of the German Celesio AG, a European leader in retail and intermediate pharmaceutical distribution. Admenta Italia Spa manages 162 Communal Pharmacies in Emili, Romagna, Tuscany, and Lombardy.

Beginning January 4, 2005, all Italian Communal Pharmacies, along with their branches and distributors, are required to comply with a new law instituting a Central Database aimed at tracing pharmaceutical packages to monitor healthcare expenses. This law decree issued by the Health Ministry on July 15th 2004 was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale.

In order to be tracked in the distribution channel, packages distributed by the National Health Service are labeled with a clear identification label composed of two bar codes: an A.I.C. code identifying the single pharmaceutical compound and another ministerial code carrying the progressive compound numbering. Prior to January 2005, it was sufficient to provide only the identifying compound bar code, but now, Italian pharmacies must have the capacity to read and track the
ministerial bar code as well.

To comply with the tracking requirements, the Council Pharmacies, managed by Admenta, adopted a Datalogic Scanning solution using the Heron™ Farma handheld scanner. After evaluating several competitive solutions, Admenta chose the Datalogic Heron™ Farma scanners as it is equipped with the most innovative technical features, had the best ease-of-use, and guaranteed error-free data collection.

The Heron™ Farma scanner has been specifically designed to read the new prescription pads and to meet the new requirements of the pharmaceutical industry in Italy. When a patient goes to a Council Admenta Pharmacy to fill a prescription, the pharmacist can now associate the prescription, with the patient and the prescribed medication. Heron™ Farma scanner was the best solution for this application, as it reads progressive bar code numbers, including the bar code on the patient’s card and the bar codes on the medicine package.

“Every prescription can have up to six labels, resulting in up to 12 bar codes, as well as the prescription’s ID bar codes. The Datalogic Heron™ Farma scanner reads the correct labels in any situation, thanks to its features,” According to Doctor Raffaella Pesaresi of the Central council Pharmacy in Bologna.

Heron™ Farma handheld scanner is equipped with a special pointer, patented by Datalogic, that indicates which code is being read, making the tracking easier even when there are several codes on the prescription, a great help to pharmacists. The Heron™ Farma scanner has been designed to read one code after another and then concatenate the information. This guarantees that both codes are correctly detected and prevents incorrect matches. This process insures that the information sent to the Central Database is correct.

By using Heron™ Farma scanners supplied by Datalogic Scanning, the 162 Communal Pharmacies managed from Admenta, Italy are now all in compliance with the ministerial decree.