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[Use Case] IoT in Retail: How Dusun Implemented an IoT Strategy for a Global Coffee Chain Shop
In the fast-paced world of retail, digitalization and intelligent systems underpinned by IoT, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI) have become core competitive assets.
Facing the challenge of meeting consumer expectations, offering quality services, ensuring timely deliveries, and maintaining competitive pricing, retailers are turning to the Internet of Things (IoT) for solutions. IoT applications in retail can address significant operational challenges and unlock benefits including business process optimization, cost reduction, and service automation.
Background
A certain chain of coffee shops has seized the market opportunity by integrating the Internet into its offline stores and deeply integrating online and offline operations, gaining market recognition and owning over 10,000 stores worldwide.
As the number of stores rapidly increased, they encountered challenges in the quality and precision management of store equipment, goods, and warehouses, aiming to reduce maintenance costs and increase retail operation efficiencies.
Challenges
Equipment Management at Stores
Real-time monitoring of coffee machines to identify factors that could lead to malfunctions before they occur is vital. No one wants downtime leading to significant losses. Hence, predictive maintenance using IoT is increasingly applied in such contexts.
In the context of predictive maintenance for IoT, edge computing plays a critical role in enabling real-time data processing and analysis at the edge of the network. By deploying machine learning models and other predictive analytics algorithms on edge devices, it is possible to analyze sensor data in real-time and detect anomalies or patterns that may indicate a potential failure. This enables maintenance teams to take proactive measures to prevent equipment failure, rather than simply reacting to failures after they occur.
Thus, the coffee chain was in need of a high-performance edge computing gateway to facilitate predictive maintenance for devices like coffee machines.
Quality Control of Goods
One of the most challenging aspects of running a coffee shop is ensuring the consistency of beverages. Customers expect the same taste every time they purchase a drink. The company must guarantee that a latte at one store shares the same flavor profile as one from another store. Consistency remains key even within a single coffee shop with multiple baristas who might have varying opinions on the ideal preparation parameters for specific drinks. Thus, IoT technology needs to be employed in the coffee-making process to uniformly maintain quality by monitoring machine water temperature, extraction times, machine temperature, and pressure to prevent issues like burnt coffee or premature aging.
Warehouse Management for Shops
The freshness of ingredients is key to a great cup of coffee. Warehouse management is a crucial component of the coffee supply chain, where everything from environmental conditions to inventory levels are significant. Real-time monitoring of temperature and humidity in the shop's warehouse is necessary to ensure the quality of the coffee beans.
IoT replaces tasks that are human-error prone, time-consuming, and monotonous with intelligent automation, allowing staff to focus on their strengths. Bakers can ensure each batch has the correct settings, while baristas serve coffee at the optimal temperature. IoT gateways bridge the communication gap between people, machines, and processes.
For this reason, the coffee chain sought a provider that could offer IoT hardware as well as a wealth of experience in embedded hardware and software development to meet its customized technological needs.
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Dusun IoT Bluetooth Gateway Solutions
After assessing the company's needs and considering the specific circumstances like multiple devices and high volumes of data, Dusun IoT provided a Bluetooth gateway hardware solution. The DSGW-210 IoT Gateway is a robust product capable of seamless connectivity with the chain's existing Bluetooth-enabled devices. It collects data from coffee machines and temperature/humidity sensors—covering quality checks, cup counters, consumption statistics, machine maintenance, bean usage status, offline alerts, machine water temperature, and warehouse conditions. The information is then transmitted to the enterprise cloud swiftly and accurately, enhancing management precision and staff work efficiency.
The DSGW-210 IoT Gateway boasts strong performance with edge computing capacities, alleviating the cloud's burden and reducing operational costs. With 32GB of flash memory and 2GB RAM, the system runs smoothly, supports multiple applications and tasks, and prevents slowdowns or crashes due to insufficient memory – crucial for retail outlets with numerous devices and data-intensive operations.
The Linux-compatible DSGW-210 enables existing software applications to be ported to the gateway, ensuring seamless device and network operation.
Technical Team Support Services
Dusun's experienced technical team provided embedded software development services, porting the company's existing software applications onto the DSGW-210 hardware, ensuring stable device and gateway operation. The gateway offers extensive SDK documentation to support engineers in rapid secondary development, adapting to the company's existing platform.
Summary
Dusun’s hardware solutions have empowered the coffee chain to digitalize their management, creating smarter, more precise, and convenient store operations.
This use case exemplifies the transformative power of IoT solutions in retail. For retailers who wish to adopt IoT for automating and driving their digital transformation strategies, collaborating with an experienced team like Dusun IoT can get comprehensive support in consulting, developing, and managing tailored IoT hardware solutions to optimize retail shop management.
Dusun IoT focuses on the supply of kernel hardware in the Internet of Things (IoT). Whether you’re a solution provider, distributor, or IoT developer, Dusun is here to help you create your best IoT project. For more information, visit www.dusuniot.com
Contact
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.dusuniot.com
Technical Support: community.dusuniot.com
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