The Food Retail is playing an extremely challenging game today. On one hand, the socio-economic recovery with the need to diversify the user experience to attract people back into stores; on the other, the requirement to manage food products (especially perishables) carefully to reduce losses (food waste alone costs the Italian supply chain over 3 billion) and optimize the sector’s ecological footprint.
MotIQa, a smart digital enabler for the Retail, Advertising and Industry 4.0 sectors, and Imecon, an Italian company specialized in designing, prototyping, and producing technological solutions in the fields of Digital Signage and Smart Cities – both part of the Voilàp group – have developed a management tool for smart retail capable of automating inventory control.
RealTime Inventory is a custom development of MotIQa’s Jot platform, created to notify the removal and repositioning of any type of Food product.
The refrigerator equipped with RFID sensors can manage anomalies, malfunctions, and stock in real-time, allowing efficient management of logistics and security processes. Furthermore, by collecting product data each time an item is taken, RealTime Inventory can estimate a forecast related to the trend, the performance of a promotion, and – data hardly obtainable otherwise – how many times taken products are then put back without being purchased.
Integrating natively with the system created by MotIQa to enhance its functionalities, Imecon has created a true Smart Fridge: since stock management is particularly critical for the cold chain, a series of sensors have been added that can signal any malfunctions before they cause damage to the stocked products.
“It is hardware built specifically to optimize the software’s functionalities” explains Fabio Vairani, CEO of Imecon. “It allows the collection of a large amount of data otherwise complex to obtain, simplifying decision-making in the efficient management of logistics and security processes.Nicola Guerrini, CEO of MotIQa, clarifies: “The data collected in this way become enablers of the decisions made by the Managers, allowing the definition of more informed optimization and security strategies in response to customer behavior. If public behavior constantly changes, this tool for Retail is Smart precisely because it allows adding an extra level of control so that human decisions can be made based on verified objective data
