Many of us have heard of the "Internet of Things" and see it as part of the mobile revolution, but may not know what it means and how it affects the food industry.

"Internet of Things" may have many different definitions, but in essence, "Internet of Things" connects daily necessities, products and electronic devices with a network, and collects and exchanges them through software systems. Data, a more intuitive example is Mobike, which is used for autonomous scanning of codes. To build the Internet of Things requires the use of a variety of technologies, including RFID (Radio Frequency Technology), NFC (Near Field Communication), mobile networks and Bluetooth, which usually use the Internet as a form of communication network connection.

In recent years, clothing and consumer goods retailers have been using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to improve efficiency and quickly count inventory on warehouses and store shelves. The RFID tag system contains a chip that stores data about the product. They have greater advantages over inventory systems that rely on traditional barcodes:

● The speed of checking inventory is greatly improved, and multiple objects can be read in one second

● The amount of stored data is large and can be rewritten

● Data can be read at a long distance

● The object to be read does not need to be in the line of sight of the scanner

Bill Hardgrave, Dean of the Hubbert School of Business at Auburn University and an RFID expert, also stated that the commercial benefits of this technology "approximately 50% of well-known clothing brands, department stores and retailers evaluate, test or adopt RFID around the world. "

In 2016, a major US airline replaced the barcode manual scanning technology with RFID technology to reduce the probability of baggage loss. In one year, the technology was launched for the first time with a success rate of 99.9%. In contrast, the success rate of traditional barcode systems was only 85%. This high accuracy can greatly reduce the probability of improper baggage handling, saving millions of dollars and a lot of time. The success of this technology in the retail and aviation industries will also have a similar impact on the food industry. After all, food waste is a costly and complex issue.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that “only about one-third of the world’s food is actually consumed by humans every year, and about 1.3 billion tons are discarded or wasted.” The UN agency said that this loss and waste is equivalent to a large amount of waste every year. Resources-"About US$680 billion in industrialized countries and US$310 billion in developing countries." There is no doubt that food retailers have always faced a problem, how to balance the products on the shelves and the products in the inventory that may be corrupt in the future. For example, overstocking for promotional activities, over-delivery to stores, or too late for inventory changes, old products on the shelves are buried behind new products.

Many experts believe that the food industry will benefit from IoT technology to provide product traceability, reduce food waste, and improve transportation and product handling efficiency. Especially RFID technology has the potential to solve typical or atypical problems in the food industry. RFID technology is highly reliable, reasonably priced, and based on international standards that can be universally applied to different tags and devices.

The time and labor costs required to manage a store’s inventory are high. The profit margins of food stores are extremely low, so any opportunity to improve the efficiency of food supply and inventory management is worth considering. Last summer, Avery Dennison launched the first safe and reliable food smart label, and completed a pilot project with a leading food retailer in the UK. These tags can store or capture information through sensors, and transmit data wirelessly, even in frozen environments and other environments specific to the food industry. The results are exciting. A preliminary analysis of the three-month pilot project shows that food waste has been reduced by 20%, and it is possible to reduce food inventory management costs by about 50%. In the distribution of food throughout the supply chain, the accuracy of inventory has improved significantly-more than 99%.

According to FAO estimates, in industrialized countries, 40% of food waste occurs at the retail level and at the consumer level. RFID technology can play an important role in improving sustainability. Retailers can remove unpurchased perishable food faster. Send it to a food bank to provide food to hungry families and prevent food from entering the landfill unnecessarily. Not only that, RFID also allows employees to save 50% of the work time spent manually checking the date.

Temperature detection in the food supply chain is also a hot issue, and some companies provide short-range NFC solutions. For example, Avery Dennison has developed a credit card-sized temperature logger TT Sensor Plus, which can track the ambient temperature readings of the entire supply chain process, store more than 700 temperature readings within a user-defined time interval, and then use Android Smart Mobile phone reading is similar to contactless payment. An RFID version suitable for longer distances is also under development.

Smart labels are currently being tested by many retailers to help effectively manage the inventory of perishable, expensive but low-profit foods such as meat, fish and poultry. With the use of smart labels, food waste will no longer be a factor causing pressure on the food system or tight profit margins.

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