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.

Cordless Scanning Technology using Handheld Bar Code Readers

Since the mid 1990s it has become more evident that there is a growing demand for cordless barcode readers, mainly for industrial and logistics applications but also increasingly for use in retail, healthcare, bill payment, banking, and other general purpose applications The reasons for this are obvious.

Mobility: For warehousing applications the need for cordless mobility is clear, but mobility is also important for shop floor barcode data capture applications where the user may need to move within a limited area, such as automotive production lines where an employee may need to walk around the car on the line.

In these applications bar code readers with 10 - 15 meter long cables were often used to give the user mobility but this was both restrictive and hazardous. In retail and office automation solutions the operator can benefit by using the same reader for POS or front desk operations, as well as for inventory or filing activities.

User productivity: Often, taking the barcode reader to the object to be scanned can be faster and safer than the other way round. Using a longer cable to achieve this results in the cable being continuously tangled and wastes the time of the operator who is constantly trying to untangle it.

Safety: Long cables do not just cause reductions in productivity but are also major safety risks. For example, many objects can be tangled up and pulled off of shelves, injuring workers. The operator and their colleagues are also at risk of getting tripped up by the cable, which can result in industrial accidents.

Cost: Cordless devices are more expensive to purchase when compared to tethered readers but when all of the above benefits are taken into consideration combined with the added downtime caused by broken cables and the cost for cable replacement (cables may only last about six months in some of the most stressful conditions), the Total Cost of Ownership of a cordless scanner is lower. Cordless Solutions are the answer - many solutions have been proposed by different bar code equipment manufacturers over the years.