Reliability is Critical

The most important factor when considering what POS system to put into the grocery environment is reliability. Nothing is worse than downtime. In a dress shop, if the POS is down, transaction volume is relatively low, items are typically price marked, transactions can be manually recorded, and you can get buy. POS Downtime in a supermarket means trading is stopped, customer revenue is lost, customers are dissatisfied, staff are frustrated, and no one wins.

Toshiba TEC's POS engines are purpose built for this level of reliability and serviceability. Toshiba TEC's core business around the world for over thirty years has been supermarkets, and all of the know how and understanding which has gone into making bullet proof supermarket grade POS systems and peripherals is represented in each POS engine which Toshiba TEC produce. They are the most reliable POS system in the world bar none.

Of course this reliability has a cost, and when the price of the Toshiba TEC POS engine is compared to a standard consumer PC, the PC is much cheaper. But that is the point. Consumer PCs are built to be cheap. Little R & D or thought has gone into reliable design or serviceability, but rather just throw the latest CPU into a box as cheaply as possible and sell it through the internet. If you have a supermarket, especially one that runs 24/7/365 or close to this, do you want your business to rely on this? Or would you rather invest a little more and put in a Toshiba TEC POS system which will minimise downtime, be easily serviced, use minimal power, and with parts availability for many years after your system has been installed.

Modular Layout

The Toshiba TEC POS PCs are called POS engines because they can drive many of  the peripherals in the system. Printers, operator and customer displays, cash drawers, EFT Pin Pads, and scanners can derive their power from the POS engine. In the supermarket, due to the nature of the checkout design the optimal system layout is of a modular nature. This means the POS engine is separate from the operator & customer displays, the cash drawer and the printer. This allows the operator to maintain a customer facing position for the majority of each transaction, improving customer service and preserving operator comfort.

The POS engine is located typically under the checkout counter, while the various peripheral devices are layed out in optimal positions to suit the checkout style. One of the most popular peripherals is the "Navikey" hybrid keyboard/operator display. As with all Toshiba TEC peripherals, it is ultra reliable, and purpose built for the supermarket use. It offers the best of both worlds, with the robust keyboard section used for the high volume buttons while the touch screen offers the flexibility for the POS application for operations like selection of fruit & vegetables. The Toshiba TEC TRST-A10 printer is a high speed thermal receipt printer which comes standard with USB or serial interface, and is typically powered from the powered USB port on the POS terminal. The cash drawers are also built to supermarket grade, and offer either standard layout or flip top layout for the express type checkouts where space is at a premium. A range of customer facing displays is also available, from two line to full screen layouts.