EXCLUSIVE Q&A: Lowes Foods tracks food temperature with IoT
What have the results been?
The SmartSense IoT Sensing-as-a-Service framework is now safeguarding more than 5,000 assets across 141 Lowes Foods locations, providing real-time monitoring and actionable insights that allow us to maintain safety and efficiency.
The implementation of IoT temperature monitoring has been transformative, significantly improving our response to critical scenarios like power outages and hurricane preparedness, along with everyday facilities management.
By transitioning from paper-based processes to digital task management, we have minimized errors and streamlined notifications, allowing stores to act quickly and reduce potential losses. This technology also replaces manual paper checks and walk logs, ensuring greater record-keeping accuracy.
Since deployment of the solution, our expectations have been exceeded, particularly in mitigating losses during unforeseen events like natural disasters. Across all Lowe’s Foods locations, IoT has revolutionized our approach to asset tracking and management, enabling us to maintain operational continuity and resilience even in challenging circumstances.
In addition, SmartSense’s enterprise-wide support ensures real-time monitoring of refrigerated assets, proactively identifying performance issues before breakdowns occur. This has dramatically reduced refrigeration failure shrink and supported a higher rate of execution on fresh prepared food temperature checklists.
With actionable data at every touchpoint, we can respond faster, prioritize affected products, and achieve operational advantages by addressing issues before they escalate.
Are there future plans for IoT technology you can discuss?
Our goal with IoT is to track and manage safety incidents and accident reports by leveraging ad-hoc checklist completions. This will allow us to maintain a more detailed and real-time record of safety-related events.
In additionally, IoT enables continuous monitoring of dry output sensors, including both open and closed-circuit sensors, ensuring that any potential issues are promptly identified and addressed.
By incorporating this advanced technology, our goal is to streamline the reporting process, enhance response times, and ensure an ongoing exceptional shopping experience for all Lowes Foods customers.
Founded in 1954 and based in Winston-Salem, N.C., Lowes Foods operates close to 100 full-service supermarkets in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.