- AI, integrated visual scanning powers analytics platform to provide real-time insight on food freshness
- Monitoring sensors are used with chemistry-embedded QR codes for easy scanning and visual freshness measurement
A New Jersey-based company is using integrated visual scanning and an AI-powered analytics platform to provide real-time insight on food freshness.
Evigence’s has released FreshSense, a freshness management platform that utilizes sensors with patented chemistry-embedded QR codes. The company is billing the products as offering food and cold-chain companies’ data-driven freshness insights at the case or unit level needed to boost end-to-end supply chain efficiency, guarantee food quality, reduce food loss, manage compliance and make decisions with confidence.
“Our technology will eventually be the death of the date code as we aim to optimize freshness throughout supply chains, inventory, retail and even in consumers’ homes,” said Evigence Co-Founder and CEO Yoav Levy in a press statement.
Eliminating Waste
Company officials noted an exorbitant amount of waste across the supply chain creates operational and environmental challenges for the food industry. While perishable foods spoil primarily as a result of cumulative temperature exposure over time, existing solutions either only capture temperature at select points in the supply chain, cannot differentiate freshness at the unit level or ignore temperature conditions altogether.
The supply change management for the food industry is complicated, by the fact that each perishable item has different environmental requirements for optimal freshness and seemingly minor variations like a single degree of temperature can add to or cut shelf life by 10 percent.
According to data cited by Evigence from trials with food industry partners, the shelf lives of retail units vary 30-40 percent on average in the same delivery or pallet, while the actual remaining life of fresh foods varies anywhere from 50-100 percent.
FreshSense Capabilities
“Date codes are terribly inaccurate indicators of food freshness and product quality, leading to tremendous inefficiencies throughout the food industry supply chain – from the distributors all the way to consumers’ homes. Freshness expectations versus reality lead to the waste of perfectly good food, as well as the consumption of unsafe food,” stated Levy.
To address these issues, FreshSense, the first freshness monitoring sensors with chemistry-embedded QR codes for easy scanning and visual freshness measurement with precision temperature and time tracking tied to the individual perishable product profiles and food types.
Additionally features include:
- A Freshness Management Dashboards delivering real-time insights to improve inventory management based on Real Remaining Shelf Life;
- Automated Early Supply Chain Scanning with automatic data capturing (ADC) technology, streamlining traceability from initial production lines while minimizing manual labor to ensure optimal freshness and minimize waste;
- Evigence Advanced Multi-Scan Technology, which simultaneously scans multiple cases of perishables using hands-on AR or product-line vision systems for complete freshness visibility and guaranteed food quality from production to consumption.
Real-time Insights
With more than 2,000 current users, Evigence offers real-time insights and alerts, addressing freshness loss at the unit level at every stage of the supply chain – from acceptance levels upon delivery to the detection of freshness compromises during transport routes and distribution center holdings.
“It is time to take the guesswork out of food freshness to accurately guarantee food safety. The journey from production to consumption is filled with variables that heavily impact quality and freshness,” Levy.
“Adding advanced temperature tracking down to the item level, rather than assuming consistency across an entire pallet or shipment, will change how the food industry assesses freshness.”
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