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Addressing the Retrofit and Greenfield Opportunities |
NEWS |
Retail businesses are faced with the challenge of not only growing consumer demand, but also meeting this demand quickly, at low costs, and with limited impact on their operation overall Leading supermarket chains aiming to meet customer and regulatory demands have undertaken several ambitious intiatives, such as:
This ABI Insight provides a snapshot of the various non-cellular Low-Power Wide Area (LPWA)-enabled devices and solutions that are available today for the retail industry to achieve the above initiatives.
Snapshot of the Device and Solution Ecosystem |
IMPACT |
As the retail supply chain delivery model is increasingly defined by consumer demand, retailers are moving from traditional, forecast-driven to demand-driven supplychains. Using the data captured throughout the supplychain, Internet of Things (IoT) platforms are enabling a more collaborative network that allows retailers to source and deliver the right products to customers through their desired channels of distribution. As the geographical footprint of LPWA networks continues to expand, we are starting to witness a growing numbers of IoT asset tracking solutions that are enabling retailers develop more agile supplychains.
Resuable Retail Container and Pallet Tracking Solutions
Retrofit Asset Tracking Solutions
Logicall, a U.K.-based startup, has developed an end-to-end condition monitoring solution, Logicall Icecube, which uses Wi-fi, Bluetooth and LoRa. Its SensorPoint device is a LoRa device that can monitor temperature, humidity, light and CO2.
LPWA Fosters Frugal Innovation in Grocery Retail Market |
RECOMMENDATIONS |
The food and grocery retail industry has often been an early adopter of technological innovations driven by the nature of its business, working in high volumes and low margins in a strictly regulated market. Furthermore, with multi-channel retailing, especially growth in online retail, retailers are turning to IoT and data analytics to deliver a uniform customer experience (front-end) and improve operational efficiencies (back-end) across different channels to stay competitive and profitable. The recent growth in multi-channel retailing has also put significant strain on traditional supply chains, with inefficiencies on the upstream side including channel-specific inventory pools, increasing out-of-stock situations, high return rates, and long lead times. One of the key challenges is the lack of visibility in the supply chain due to siloed systems, lack of collaboration among suppliers and retailers, and lack of unified data sharing platforms to provide end-to-end visibility. The above mentioned IoT solutions help grocery retailers address the following:
Availbility: Traditional grocery store retail demand is based on long-term forecast estimates from data derived through multiple sources such as store replenishment systems, surveys, and data purchased from third parties. IoT solutions that use LPWA sensor devices can help gather near real-time data on stock availability, making inventory management more scalable and reducing excess inventory.
Traceability: There is greater demand for transperancy in the supply chain for consumers who want to make informed purchase decisions based on products’ source of origin and for producers who want to identify vulnerabilities in the supply chain to make them more efficient. Traceability also helps grocery retailers quickly identify, isolate, and act on food safety issues and improves security against theft of regulated products such as cigarettes and alcohol.
Sustainability: Key themes include focusing on supply chain sustainability in unit load equipment such as pallets, crates, dollies, and other devices and the opportunity in sharing and reuseability of resources. The Commonwealth Handling Equipment Pool (CHEP), a subsidiary of Brambles, manages over 500 million pooled assets that include pallets, trays, trolleys, and containers. In 2013, CHEP introduced the transport collaboration program in Europe, which, over the last 6 years, has amassed over 200 customers collaborating to find common transport flows to share truck space and save 4 million in empty miles and 8.7 million euros.
Recent developments in IoT and the availability of LPWA network solutions are adressing critical supply chain inefficiencies in the grocery retail industry. The convergence of LPWAN devices, cloud-based platforms, and data analytics are not only helping retailers gain valuable insights, but are also evolving from siloed systems to unified platforms, providing visibility to all the ecosystem partners within the retailer supply chain.