With the certification of InterStore 6.2, ADC is ready to fully leverage SAP infrastructure and integrated applications to help mutual clients meet current and emerging business requirements in fresh-food production at the store, while integrating with SAP for Retail. This integration will provide more accurate, timely and pertinent fresh-inventory data to customers for an optimized, fresh-food supply chain.

The SAP Integration and Certification Center has certified ADC’s InterStore 6.2 solution to interoperate with SAP for Retail using enterprise services. This allows retail-grocery enterprises using ADC’s InterStore solution to optimally maintain and manage a store’s perishable goods.

“There is a new paradigm for managing fresh-grocery departments,” said Steve Loveridge, president of ADC, “ADC’s InterStore Fresh Item Management technology, integrated with SAP for Retail, enables the grocery enterprise to manage its supply chain better than ever before.”

“There are exponential advantages in ADC’s FIM application suite when integrated with a modern ERP system,” stated Robert Appell, ADC’s vice president of development, “ADC’s service-oriented architecture allows us to integrate FIM information with SAP solutions, whether it is the cost of goods sold for store-produced items, or inventory movement within the fresh departments. We collect this data during in-store business processes that use browser-based, hand-held scanners, electronic-weigh scales, label printers and touch-screen workstations, aggregating and passing this data to SAP applications in real-time.”

InterStore is ADC’s advanced FIM suite that combines recipe management, scales management and in-store production from within one application suite. The suite allows the stores to produce fresh items using recipes and then manages the fresh inventory until they either sell the item or otherwise adjust the inventory. The suite facilitates managing fresh products to keep them looking the freshest they can be, with reduced overstocks (shrink) and improved sales by reducing out of stocks – all the while making sure the fresh items are properly labeled with nutrition, ingredient, dietary and wellness information. These fresh-item attributes are increasingly important to an evermore health-conscious grocery shopper. InterStore automates industry-proven item handling to increase productivity at the stores, providing real-time summary and exception information to management and headquarters staff. For example, with InterStore the very same recipe that generates the food-safety facts on the scale label is the exact same recipe that the store's production personnel use to produce that product. That one-for-one advantage helps the stores focus on executing the production well – leaving the details to the headquarters staff who maintain those recipes for consistency, correct food-safety facts and rigorous regard for the food-safety details. This reduces error and increases accuracy, which are both key performance metrics for increased sales and profitability.

InterStore is perpetual-inventory based and keeps the status of the produced items in the store available and accountable at all times. That information is not only important to corporate executives, but also to store personnel who use and need it to improve their department's operating performance.

For more information on ADC's InterStore, visit http://www.ad-c.com.

About ADC
Since 1989, ADC, Inc. has specialized in the development of data-management and communications solutions for the supermarket, grocery and fresh-food industries. The InterScale software developed by ADC is a global technology leader for host management of supermarket bar-code-printing scales. InterScale is a member of ADC’s InterStore suite of fresh applications along with NutriGen recipe management and P-Cubed (Perishable Production Planning, shrink and inventory management). InterStore consolidates ADC’s leading position in the FIM market with an integrated fresh framework to handle today’s competitive and food-safety requirements, while optimizing production in the grocer's fresh-retail departments. ADC has a history of pioneering and developing revolutionary Web-centric solutions and is dedicated to continuing this evolution. For more information on ADC, visit http://www.ad-c.com.

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Sprouts' selection of ADC’s InterStore Fresh Item Management (FIM) suite was predicated on ADC’s leadership in recipe management – which is fully integrated with scales management – to promote excellence in fresh-food safety. The unique store format and programs to encourage a healthy lifestyle at Sprouts required the chain to upgrade scales management systems to implement the flexible InterStore FIM solution from ADC. Sprouts' concerns in fresh-food safety and desire to provide a wide variety of perishable choices led to an investigation into new ways to better handle the details of perishable-department production.

“Their absolute requirement to protect the shopper led them to us,” said Jan Dragotta, vice president of sales and marketing for ADC. “ADC offered to visit Sprouts and openly discuss with them FIM best practices and found that those practices match their business needs perfectly. Sprouts' attention to production details at the store requires rigorous execution of those production processes. They needed solutions that would not only help them manage those details, but facilitate their new store growth.”

“At Sprouts, it is all about our shoppers. We strive to have the best standards in perishable food safety,” said Doug Sanders, president of Sprouts Farmers Market. “Our value message is the core of our business because our customers are very health-conscious with a desire for the freshest foods for their family. We found that ADC was highly in tune with our passion for excellence in executing our business practices.”

ADC's InterStore system automates the processes for properly labeling fresh products based on recipes; more specifically it has the particular capability to manage all fresh-item recipes via NutriGen and drive the food-safety facts to the scale via InterScale. And, it does much more than that. Those same recipes are made available to the store personnel with the exact steps, ingredient amounts, processes, instructions and even pictures or multimedia to produce those products. The recipe handling at the store is delivered by the P-Cubed (perishable production planning) module. P-Cubed ensures that the recipe used to generate the scale label is the exact same recipe used by the store.

“This is no small distinction,” said Vince Dreshner, director of perishables at Sprouts Farmers Market. “A significant part of our business is centered on changing our product needs and quick execution of new ideas, products and programs for our customers’ benefit. With ADC, we learned that the technology is available today to automate many of the tedious tasks we do manually, saving us a lot of time and cost.”

InterStore accomplishes this enterprise synergy by isolating the details for the fresh departments at headquarters in a web-centric application. This frees the store personnel to pay attention to producing the absolute freshest products at the lowest possible costs and allows them to give more attention to their shoppers. The stores use scales, browser-based-mobility handheld scanners, kiosks or workstations to access the system's central application – requiring no distributed infrastructure to implement.

“We leverage the client’s already-installed Intranet or public-secured Internet to manage the store's fresh-item inventories,” said Steve Loveridge, president at ADC. “There is nothing to install or maintain from a systems standpoint for in-store browsers to access the system – all you do is point, scan and touch to capture the results of retail operations. We've found that systems that are easy to learn and inexpensive to use and maintain are things our clients covet – especially in this economy. We are fulfilling this need with InterStore.Net”

About ADC
Since 1989, ADC has specialized in the development of data-management and communications solutions for the supermarket, grocery and fresh-food industries. The InterScale scales management software developed by ADC is a global technology for host management of supermarket bar-code-printing scales. ADC has also developed a suite of fresh applications called InterStore. InterStore includes: InterScale scales management, NutriGen recipe management and P-Cubed shrink management, fresh inventory management and perishable production planning. InterStore consolidates ADC’s lead in the FIM market with an integrated fresh framework to handle greater complexity and optimize production in the grocer's fresh-retail departments.

ADC has a history of pioneering and developing revolutionary web-centric solutions. Successful products include solid-state iScale server hardware as a carrier of InterScale software into the store. This device has outlived, by several years, many in-store hardware platforms and ADC recently announced its support for iScale to a 10-year useful life. ADC’s innovation and lowest total cost of operation solutions have proven to be a value to clients by delivering continuous return on investment. ADC is dedicated to continuing this evolutionary benefit for our clients. For more information on ADC visit www.ad-c.com.

About Sprouts Farmers Market
Sprouts Farmers Market, an Arizona-based company, is one of the nation's fastest growing retailers sprouting in Arizona, California, Texas, and Colorado. Sprouts specializes in farm fresh produce, purchased from local growers when possible. Sprouts also offers a large selection of vitamins and supplements, all natural meats, fresh seafood, bins full of bulk foods, an extensive selection of natural and organic grocery items, rBST free milk, imported cheeses, deli meats and more. For more information on Sprouts Farmers Market, visit www.sprouts.com.

ADC, a leading provider of fresh-item, recipe-management, and scales software to the grocery-retail and food-service industries, announced the release of its solution to the new COOL requirements.

“This requirement presents to our grocery clients and Fresh Item Management prospects a real challenge.  Many are wondering what regulations could be next and are looking for solutions that will allow them to quickly react to any future mandates,” said Steve Loveridge, president of ADC.

To help the grocer track traceability of products through the entire fresh-production process, ADC has developed several software modules that easily manage fresh-item traceability details.

The Perishable Production Planning (P-Cubed) module allows grocers to track meat-, bakery- and deli-department inventory received, produced, sold, marked down and thrown away through a Web-centric thin-client Web-browser user interface. Quality grocery chains, such as United Supermarkets, Hannaford Brothers Co. and Lowes Supermarkets, have implemented ADC's InterStore Fresh Item Management (FIM) systems for users of all levels to track fresh inventory and production in retail departments.

To assist with the compliance of new COOL regulation updates, ADC's InterStore system (that includes specific capability in ADC's InterScale and P-Cubed modules for COOL compliance) automates the processes of country of origin labeling by passing the proper country information directly to the bar-code-labeling scales. When producing packages to be weighed, wrapped and labeled, the system provides the proper label, with minimum interruption of the current production process that the grocer's trained employees have perfected.

ADC’s COOL software drives the proper country of origin selection options to Hobart, Mettler-Toledo and other scales that support new COOL operator features. With these scales, the in-store service personnel must select the country to print on the label; however, ADC’s COOL module eliminates labeling errors by only listing the unique country options specific to each product for selection. The merchandisers maintain the information details centrally to keep the complexity out of the store and at headquarters, avoiding the need for country-specific PLU number duplication, and enabling the grocer to save costs at the headquarters and on in-store record-keeping systems.

Grocers may also couple this system with ADC’s Grind Management module to assist the meat department in monitoring the exact contents of various meats used in a grind to ensure proper record keeping and labeling of ground packages.  This system aids precision in production and is a forerunner to supporting Nutritional Meat Labeling – potentially the next regulatory sunrise that ADC can handle today.  The system provides the shoppers with the same types of information on meat products that they see in the other service departments, with respect to ingredients, nutrition and dietary facts. 

“With ADC’s FIM suite, the grocer no longer has to worry about all of these emerging details in the fresh department and legislative sunrise dates,” states Jan Dragotta, vice president of sales and marketing for ADC.  “ADC even has an industry-best fresh-item recipe-management system, NutriGen, that ensures that the recipe used to generate fresh-item ingredients and nutrition-fact statements is the exact same recipe used by the store personnel to produce those finished items.  At ADC, we put systems in place and take the room for error out.”

As the USDA continues to respond to consumers’ food-safety demands for nutritional and food-safety information, it will be important to implement a system that easily adapts and grows with the grocer's business needs. 

For more information on ADC's InterStore.Net Fresh Item Management systems, visit http://www.ad-c.com/COOLMarch09.php.

To read about President Obama's recent take on food safety, visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7943560.stm 

Since 1989, ADC, Inc., has specialized in the development of data-management and communications solutions for the supermarket, grocery and fresh-food industries. ADC's InterScale management software is a global technology for host management of supermarket bar-code-printing scales. ADC has developed a new suite of fresh applications, called InterStore, that includes the following: InterScale scales management, NutriGen recipe management and P-Cubed perishable production planning. InterStore completes ADC’s emergence into the FIM market with an integrated fresh framework to handle greater complexity and optimize production in the grocer's fresh-retail departments.

ADC has a history of pioneering and developing revolutionary Web-centric solutions. Successful products include a solid-state iScale server hardware as a carrier of InterScale software into the store. This device has outlived, by several years, many thin-client hardware platforms, and ADC recently announced its support for iScale to a 10-year supported useful life. ADC’s innovation and lowest total cost of operations solutions have proven to be a value to clients by delivering continuous return on investment. Releasing ADC COOL demonstrates ADC’s dedication to continuing this evolutionary benefit.

For more information on the COOL compliance March 16 deadline, please visit http://www.countryoforiginlabeling.info/Newsreleases/112008_Kentucky.pdf.

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