Concord, Massachusetts-based Manufacturers’ Services Ltd, a full- line contract manufacturing firm has won a contract from Symbol Technologies Inc of Holtsville, New York to design and manufacture a new self-service scanning system to be used in supermarkets. The manufacturing process will take place at Manufacturers’ Valencia plant which it bought from IBM Espana last September (CI No 2,741) and will involve the assembly of some 250 pieces to be supplied by more than 30 companies around the world. Manufacturers’ managing director Pedro de Castro told Computerworld Espana that the introduction of the new system will represent as important a breakthrough as the appearance of the automatic teller machine in its day. Supermarket queues will soon become a thing of the past, de Castro maintains. Shoppers use the portable scanners to scan the goods themselves, and when they have finished, the scanner produces a ticket showing the total, which they take to the cash desk. The user can check the readings made by the scanner. The Valencia plant will design the unit that contains the complete system, and will produce the mold for the module that holds the scanners, as well as all the electronics, cabling and system logic. Symbol has also begun to manufacture the scanners at its New York headquarters and the systems will first be installed in the US, Holland, and the UK. De Castro hails the project as earnest of its commitment to extend and diversify business at the plant.
