APA Solution
A project of a smart shelf connected to the Internet cloud is being developed, which continuously informs about the amount of available goods.
Smart objects are increasingly entering our daily lives, work and education. They are not avoiding the retail industry either, where they can be a significant logistical convenience. The bottleneck of any store operation is usually estimating product quantities and ordering goods from the sales representative. The problem can also be a large dispersion of retail outlets to which the goods need to be delivered.
What if all the information about stock levels or products available on the store shelves were updated in real time and made available in the Internet cloud, which could be accessed by the store employee, store manager and sales representative? Wouldn't such a solution make it easier to stock the store and allow for more effective and relevant sales?
This was the question we faced when creating the APA Navigator project aimed at the retail industry.
The result of more than a year of work by the APA Innovation team was the design of smart store shelves equipped with the latest IoT technology. Each of the above-mentioned entities involved in planning supplies for stores received a simple tool that can be managed via a smartphone equipped with a dedicated app. In real time, the shelf sends information to the cloud about the quantity of goods and thus provides actual data to respond to the needs of the store in real time. In case of a failure, connecting the shelf to the network also gives the possibility of its analysis and diagnosis by an APA expert, without coming to the store. However, the main beneficiaries of the APA Navigator solution will be retailers, who will receive an innovative tool for a better and more efficient management of store orders.
Among the advantages of APA Navigator shelves, the following benefits are particularly worth mentioning:
- The shelves tell you when you need to replenish - the system can send a message to a analyst’s smartphone or to a cloud-based control room.
- They allow you to moderate the flow of goods.
- They allow you to predict shopping trends and spot the goods that disappear fastest from the shelves.
- They allow you to create a new business system based on the analysis of measurable data.
- They make the work of store staff easier.
- They enable you to make savings and reduce sales representative visits.
- They deliver a unique user experience to consumers.
