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H-E-B PILOT SETS COURSE FOR IN-STORE AUTOMATION

SAN ANTONIO -- H.E. Butt Grocery Co. here plans to roll out later this year a new in-store inventory-control and payment-processing system in its push to enhance store automation.a solid foundation for our company to build the next generation of grocery store automation," said Bob Killough, director of retail technology, in a statement.He said the computing platform, from Sun Microsystems, Mountain

SAN ANTONIO -- H.E. Butt Grocery Co. here plans to roll out later this year a new in-store inventory-control and payment-processing system in its push to enhance store automation.

a solid foundation for our company to build the next generation of grocery store automation," said Bob Killough, director of retail technology, in a statement.

He said the computing platform, from Sun Microsystems, Mountain View, Calif., will enable H-E-B to explore emerging technologies such as the Internet and Java, the object-oriented programming language developed by Sun.

H-E-B's in-store processor is a server from IBM, Armonk, N.Y., running Sun's Solaris operating system.

When fully implemented, the in-store processor will manage the data for 250 stores, including inventory, product weights, shelf life, pricing and customer payments The in-store processor also will maintain a database of prices and ingredients for printing labels for products such as meat and baked items at the store level. Price information will be downloaded to electronic scales and all prescription transactions will be uploaded to the system.

The in-store processor will communicate all data back to H-E-B's data center via satellite and Integrated Services Digital Network lines.