Dec 04, 2020Food producers and retailers are piloting a solution from Detego that leverages RFID technology to gain insight into when fresh and perishable foods were packaged, shipped and sold at stores. The goal, the company reports, is to reduce food waste and ensure an efficient supply chain and accurate shelf inventory levels, as well as enable faster and efficient recalls. The solution, which employs cloud-based software from Detego, along with UHF RFID labels and readers from multiple technology vendors, enables artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to enable better food management.
Detego has been developing its AI and ML applications as part of its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering with its partnership with Microsoft. Detego is part of Microsoft's FastTrack and co-sponsorship programs that offer numerous features, such as money mapping and automated planograms, to retailers and brands that sell food or other merchandise. Several food makers and retailers, which have asked to remain unnamed, have been piloting the technology in Europe and North America since early this year.
Umesh Cooduvalli
One challenge the food industry has reported is a difficulty in tracking high-value food items with fixed expiration dates. Limited visibility into data regarding products in the supply chain or on store shelves can lead to food expiring before it can be sold. Detego is working with food producers and retailers, including fast-food restaurants and supermarkets, to address this and other challenges via the automated capture of data about products whose tags are interrogated at a factory, distribution center, store or restaurant.
Detego's development through the FastTrack-based program has enabled the company to serve customers all the way upstream to food manufacturers, according to Umesh Cooduvalli, Detego's VP of sales. By reading RFID tags as early as when they are applied at a production site, companies can store and access data about the production, packaging and shipping of goods, as well as when those products reach the store, and retailers can leverage the collected data to ensure that products are sold before expiring.
Microsoft's FastTrack service helps companies move their software to the cloud. In its partnership with Detego, Microsoft will help to further develop Detego's RFID solution for use in the cloud with the added intelligence features. About five years, Cooduvalli says, Detego was among the first providers to offer a cloud-based solution for fast and affordable deployments. "We got very good at providing data and virtual services to do cycle counts in thousands of stores all at the same time," he states.
London-based Detego has a development team in Austria and maintains a presence in 20 countries. The company offers apps for Android and iOS stocktaking, with a rapid rollout focus. "We can train someone within about 10 minutes to use the technology," Cooduvalli reports. Typically, those in a store or restaurant, for example, can conduct inventory counts using handheld readers at a rate of 20,000 items within only 20 minutes. The software also enables team counts so that three workers, for instance, could read inventory at a store simultaneously.
Businesses can view a holistic inventory across numerous stores, and while apparel-based customers have been benefiting from the technology for years, Cooduvalli says, there has been a growing interest for such data in the food industry. As the nature of shopping has been changing, with food purchases often taking place online, the solution enables companies to offer e-commerce food purchasing and "buy online, pickup in store" (BOPIS) models for both food and fashion apparel.
At a typical food production site deployment, RFID tags are being applied to packages of meat or other products as soon as packaging takes place. The tags are then read at two points: when the tags are attached (to confirm their proper functioning) and again as the goods are packed for shipping. In the case of direct-to-consumer orders, the goods can be tracked to the point at which they leave a distribution center for a buyer's address. According to Cooduvalli, manufacturers have been applying RFID tags to such goods as apparel, general merchandise and food, though the tags have not been read until reaching a DC or store.
In some cases, goods can go missing before arriving at a retailer site, which can result in unnecessary fees for the manufacturer. By reading tagged products as they are shipped, a Cooduvalli says, manufacturer has a digital record to confirm and prove that a product has been shipped. That prevents mistakes from happening and offers the retailer greater visibility about when products may be on their way. The result is 100 percent accuracy of shipments, he reports, and the incidence of shrinkage in the supply chain is thus reduced since an item can be tracked from factory to distribution center to store.
At stores or restaurants, users typically employ a RFID handheld reader to read each tag when goods are received, then periodically when they are on store shelves. By interrogating tags on shelves or in coolers, store or restaurant workers can view an automated record of what will soon expire. They can then use the Detego software to launch other actions, such as notifying stores to discount a specific product, and they can enable retailers to send focused advertising to regular customers via an app.
For instance, Cooduvalli explains, a shopper with a store app may indicate he or she likes T-bone steaks. If the store has such steaks on the shelf that are due to expire, it can contact that individual with a message such as "If you arrive in the next few hours, get 50 percent off." Most companies are piloting the system with expensive goods, such as meat or other fresh foods, Cooduvalli reports. So far, he adds, stores are finding that as they read RFID tags during receiving and inventory counts, the system has been six times more efficient than scanning barcodes would be.
The pilot has found that users can reduce the labor cost of tracking expiration dates by 50 percent, Cooduvalli says, which improves staff productivity. The technology also reduces a store's food waste by an average of 20 percent, he adds, and it is designed to serve as a solution for handling recalls. If a manufacturer recalls a product, users can input that product's information into a handheld reader and walk through a store or DC capturing tag reads from any goods that need to be removed from shelves. With RFID tags on store products, Cooduvalli says, users can offer faster automated checkout for customers.
The solutions that Detego is developing for AI through the FastTrack program include a feature called Money Mapping. With this feature, companies can use RFID read data to understand which products are selling the fastest, where they are located in a store and in which stores they can be found, so that they can better map out the sales that yield the most revenue. The Detego software can provide recommendations and automate planograms, including product displays for specific fixtures.
What's more, the system can enable large retailers or restaurants to compare store performance between two sites and thus create zones to track the rate of sales at each store. The software also provides replenishment advice about which products have the highest conversion rate, and where.
