KROGER ADDS SOFTWARE FOR CIRCULAR

CHRIS O'LEARY

INDIANAPOLIS -- Seeking to speed up its weekly newspaper circular production and reduce costs, Kroger Co. has signed up for a comprehensive new software program that will be completely on-line by October, a company official said.

Kroger has purchased a customized data base, Product DB, and software program, Catalog Maker, from New York-based Integrated Software. The systems will be used in Kroger's Central Marketing Area division, which has 117 stores in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio.

The programs will enable the Kroger advertising staff to streamline the production time and costs of their 12-page, four-color weekly newspaper circulars, said Dan McKinney, prepress manager at Kroger. Switching to the new system should help eventually save "approximately two days' work a week," he said.

With the new system, price changes can be made at the last minute and downloaded onto pages already laid out by the advertising staff, he said.

"Basically, we can leave price changes up to the front end and we can concentrate on the layout," McKinney said. "We hope some time in the future to be able to go remote to the printer and establish later deadlines."

McKinney said Kroger plans to use Product DB as a means to catalog products and computer images by universal product codes, making them easily accessible on the data base.

Kroger had been searching for a new system since 1993, and had been impressed with the results Grand Union Co. had achieved using the systems. "We didn't want to necessarily be the pioneer and go through the trials and errors," he said.