For the supermarket chain, fresh foods are of particular interest as they tend to spoil and become waste if they are not recurrently bought. Tracking the turnover ratio over time of each fruit and vegetable promises valuable data for the supermarket to improve order cycles, but also to draw conclusions at what season, whether, and time of month a product is sold better. Computer vision and AI allows the supermarket to implement actions to avoid lost sales due to excess or lack of stock. The assertiveness of decisions increases because they are based on solid data, without the need for manual inspection of the shelves. Another advantage of the intelligent solution is that it always identifies when a shelf is filled with a different product. The camera-based AI system automatically identifies the new product and modifies the product description and its value on the respective electronic label.
With the entire project being developed in close cooperation with the retail customer in a live setting, a clear focus was put on feasibility and practicability aligned with the expectations of the market. „We can prove how efficient the system is. We use off-the-shelf cameras and are able to process many cameras in one server. This allows us to provide a cost model that produces direct advantage over manual labor“ explains Fábio Petrassem de Sousa, Director of the Technology Solutions Division at Macnica ATD Europe. „To top it off, these solutions are easy to implement in any environment. Configuration to customer-specific requirements takes only a short time.“ As to costs, the system is a subscription based solution with the advantage of being adaptable to the size of each individual store. So it can be scalable and accessible to different sizes of retailers. De Sousa is certain that the added value through analysis of the collected data makes a significant contribution to increased profitability as it can be used for optimization of the product offering, reducing waste and efficient promotions. „The partnership between Macnica and Asus IoT is a perfect example of development and application of cutting-edge technology to impact various sectors of the economy, here in particular the retail business,“ highlights Fábio Petrassem de Sousa. With the success of system in the fruit and vegetable area, Macnica and Asus are motivated to expand the functionality into other product categories. Onboarding new products which are more durable; packed and displayed in vertical shelves are currently under development.
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