-By Joseph Tarnowski

The 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.

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.

"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 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."

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, 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 Windows, many of the problems disappeared, particularly small bugs and integration issues.

"Now, we have a proven Windows 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 can perform PC-related functions from the units, such as accessing the company's corporate intranet or playing multimedia with Windows Media Player.

"We do a lot of things from our intranet," says Gridley. "If you want to order signs for your deli case or seafood case, you can do that over our intranet. Our soups of the day we post to our Web site through an intranet application. Ordering, transfers, scheduling requests — all are done through the intranet, so they can also be done from the new scales."

With the new operating system in place, Hobart and Dorothy Lane had the foundation for what would become the HLX.

The Mother of Invention

Many of the functions now available on Hobart's HLX originated from operational challenges in the service departments. "Something became an issue, and we explored how we could use the HLX as a solution," says Gridley. "And, for the most part, we were able to quickly develop it — since there are many good Windows developers out there — and integrate the function into the HLX."

The shelf-life management feature is an example. "We’re on a Boar's Head program, and we custom-slice everything for every consumer," says Gridley. "And it has to be fresh. We won't sell anything that's been open more than seven days. But that's not easy to track, because the deli associates are continuously opening and closing the packaging as they serve customers.

"With the shelf-life management function, when you get done slicing a certain lunchmeat that's been opened, the scale will print out a label to affix to the product that was just sliced that will indicate the number of days of shelf life it has before it expires."

The HLX also prints out regular reports that alert users to items that are about to expire. "While that's really not a problem with us because of the volume and turnover, it's another set of eyes watching. This way, we can do something to move it fast, such as using it for a self-serve demo, or pushing it with a promotion. It virtually eliminates shrink; it lets you react before there is a shrink condition. You can run a daily report or set specific parameters, such as an alert for a specific number of days of shelf life. This function was never a part of the original models, but through simple programming — since it's Windows-based and is an open system — we were able to add it quickly."

Mixed Box

One function that will be added to a future version of the HLX addresses Dorothy Lane's "mixed-box" problem, which was common with bakery orders. "In the past, if a customer ordered three Killer brownies, three German chocolate brownies, one Blonde Ambition and six cookies, it all went into a mixed box that had one price," says Gridley. "While this is convenient for the customer, we lost the individuality of each component sale, and couldn't track the item movement down to the item level.

"With the HLX, when we have a mixed box, we enter each item, and the system still prints out one bar code," adds Gridley. "But when it gets to the transaction log in the front end system, the order is expanded out, listing all of the items that made up the mixed box."

This function is also for deli operations, where mixed-box orders can be common, particularly with lunchmeats. "We use self-service deli-ordering kiosks, which are becoming very popular," says Gridley. "A customer may have six different items in her deli order. Now, it can be packaged with one bag and one ticket."

Dorothy Lane isn't selfish in its contributions to the HLX, and helps with functions even if it doesn't plan to use them for its own operations. The grocer beta-tested a feature designed to track associates' productivity, in which each operator wore a wristband embedded with an RFID tag so that it recorded when they used the scale. In this way, it tracked how many orders an associate was able to fill during his shift, or per hour.

But the feature wasn’t Dorothy Lane's cup of tea, according to Gridley. "There are companies that would like that functionality in the scale," he explains. "I would rather have one of our associates take the time to sell somebody on buying a gourmet sausage or salami than worry about getting to the next order. We're very service-oriented and educational here. I always joke that we could get a whole lot more done if it weren't for these darn customers."

Not every application conceived in a Hobart-Dorothy Lane brainstorming session makes it into the system, and some don't even make it to the drawing board. One idea Gridley tossed around was designing the scale's LCD screen so it could detach and be used as a hand-held tablet computer that associates could bring into the cooler for ordering, for example.

In addition to the complexity of developing such a system, there was one major drawback that wasn't worth the risk. "If you drop the tablet, you're out of a scale and a computer," says Gridley.

Other applications being toyed with include streaming videos for promotions and — from a security standpoint — the ability to pull up photo galleries of known shoplifters, just in case an associate sees someone suspicious.

Probably the HLX's most important offering of all is its ability to add more features as business needs change, and this is where the Windows platform and its huge body of developers come into play. Regardless of which model a grocer has, additional functionality is no more than a phone call away.

"The scale's potential use is really only limited by one thing," says Gridley. "And that's the retailer's creativity in how they use it for their own in-house applications."