Kitchens in chain restaurants are designed to run on
very
low amounts of product in compromising stages of
production, i.e. products are kept stable in the freezer
and close inventory management is key to keeping the
restaurant running.
PDA's equipped with printers, barcode scanners, and
temperature probes, running the right software, could
greatly speed up inventory efficiency. Ideally, a person
would be able to do frequent inventory counts,
temperature logs, and product management with this
device.
When one was pulling product out of the freezer to
thaw,
they can scan the barcode on the product's box. The
person follows the prompts on the device to pull the
appropriate number of items. When a person places the
product on a tray to thaw, a barcode sticker with date
and
product information is automatically printed to stick on
the corner of the tray. A color stamp device on the
printer
would automatically print daydot symbols to follow the
daydot system.
When daily inventory counts were to be taken
throughout
the day, a person would simply scan the barcode on the
product and key in the number of products.
Make lists, ordering, inventory reports, product
expiration
lists, and more would be generated automatically by the
computer to efficiently help manage the kitchen.
Periodic temperature logs would be easy with an
attached
thermometer probe. The device would prompt what
product it wanted to measure the temperature of and
the
employee has but to stick the probe in the product.