ADC's InterStore.NET Fresh Item Management (FIM) software suite is a centralized solution utilizing the latest Internet technologies for managing every aspect of a fresh item's lifecycle in the stores of your grocery chain. InterStore.NET brings together ADC's three world-class grocery item management toolsets under one powerful and integrated portal.

InterStore.NET runs on load-balanced web and database server(s) at your corporate data centre and is accessed by all staff through web browsers on PC's, Kiosks and on modern PC-based barcode labeling scales throughout your intranet/Wide Area Network.  Application data is secure because it runs wholly behindyour corporate firewall.

The three major application systems within the InterStore.NET suite, all sharing one database, are:

• InterScale - for hosting data to and retrieving data from any mix of barcode labeling scales from your corporate headquarters.
• NutriGen - for managing and electronically disseminating your production/finishing recipes to achieve standardization in your in-store produced/finished products and to derive accurate cost, ingredient and nutritional information of your fresh food products.
• P-Cubed - for tracking and managing perishable shrink and inventory, generating orders and production plans.

P-Cubed maintains perpetual inventory of fresh foods in the backroom, saleable labeled and saleable un-labeled states. It includes a Physical Inventory module that makes your hand-held scanners "talk" to ease the efficiency and productivity of taking periodic and cycle-count invenory in your stores. For further details see the full description of P-Cubed under "Inventory control and loss prevention".

P-Cubed tracks meat, bakery and deli department inventory received, produced, sold, marked down and thrown away through a web-centric thin client web-browser in-store user interface.

P-Cubed captures fresh product movement using graphical hand held web browser scanners and prints shrink analysis, cut lists, cutting tests, shrink reports and at-case bar-coded markdown labels. A SQL Server or Oracle centralized database is the repository for perishable inventory data, providing powerful cross-store analysis reporting.

The P-Cubed system's software modules automate, manage and track orders and production runs in all of the fresh item service areas of the supermarket, including but not limited to Meat/Butchery, Bakery and Delicatessen. P-Cubed:

• Assists in-store users in forecasting what needs to be ordered and produced (Neither too much nor too little).
• Automates the tracking of fresh food department operations.
• Minimizes shrink and unnecessary waste.
• Provides an easy to operate system from Sales Analysis through Production Planning and Ordering.
• Maintains an accurate perpetual inventory in the departments.
• Reduces lost sales by avoiding stock-outs.
• Tracks composite item inventory sold through your sandwich/hot food bar and floral departments.

The Markdown Management software module allows in-store staff to scan price or weight-embedded barcode product  in the display case and to print out amarkdown replacmeent label or coupon

Shouldn't you be able to buy a variety of scale type brands and models for your supermarket? Scales with different features, price, performance and support? We think so, which is why we built the InterScale system to communicate with over 50 models of intelligent scales, bar-code label printers and kiosks from a variety of manufacturers. Avery Berkel, Bizerba, CAS, Digi, Hobart, Ishida, Mettler-Toledo, TEC and Weldotron - you name it (full list on our website).

InterScale hosts future-dated item, price and label information from one 'scale-neutral' system at your grocery chain headquarters to an entire mix of scales, regardless of vendor, model or protocol. Finally, you're free to find the best scales and label printers for the job without connectivity restraints or single-brand software restrictions. Free to determine your degree of centralized control. Free to realize virtually mistake-proof labeling accuracy with less human intervention and full closed-loop feedback visibility of errors.

By improving scale pricing and tare accuracy, InterScale can save each of your stores $1,000 per day - in each department. Less labor costs, higher profits, higher sales volume, reduced spoils and shrink. Brilliant, isn't it?

A robust closed-loop scales management system is essential not only to manage the items and pricing in your scales, but also to maintain regulatory label compliance for ingredients lists, allergens, nutritional facts (including Trans Fat), Country Of Origin (COOL) and traceability information. IInterScale also hosts label formats, label images, soft-key images and promotional messaging content to barcode labeling scales.  InterScale was first released in 1995 and is today at Version 6 managing over 60,000 scales worldwide. Shouldn't your scales be next?

With NutriGen you manage recipes centrally, combining vendor supplied sub-assemblies (such as the cake base) with your own raw-materials (such as frosting and decoration), defining nutrifacts once only for each re-useable ingredient. NutriGen dynamically generates legally compliant ingredient and nutrifact labeling panels, updating in-store scales and printers through your scales management system. Ingredients lists are generated in decreasing weight order. Because NutriGen cumulates the weights of each raw material across all of the re-useable sub-recipes you have defined, there is no parenthesis in a NutriGen generated ingredients list except for vendor-produced sub-recipes where the vendor's recipe is private to the vendor. Ingredients lists are therefore much shorter and less frightening to the consumer.

NutriGen also provides (often for the first time!) the true-cost of produced and finished items by aggregating the supply costs and proportions of each raw ingredient along with packaging material costs and the operational labour costs to make the item. How can you be sure your produced items are profitable unless you know their true cost?

NutriGen is part of the InterStore suite of applications provided by ADC. It complements InterScale scales management by automatically deriving accurate ingredients and nutrition facts, then communicating this data directly to in-store scales and label printers. NutriGen also complements P-Cubed by deriving perpetual inventory movements of ingredients upon production-labeling of a finished recipe. NutriGen software operates at the Headquarters location and/or at the production bakery/commissary facilities.

NutriGen has a full XML automated import feature for interfacing to your production management system.

NutriGen now supports Trans Fat and Allergen warnings at both the ingredient and recipe level.