“Smart shopping”: Bizerba and Supersmart adapt AI to retail sector for ultra-convenient consumer experience

21 Jan 2019 --- A smart, digitally-enhanced shopping experience is now a reality in supermarkets after the strategic partnering of Israeli start-up company Supersmart and packaging and labeling innovators Bizerba. The latter is actively supporting Supersmart in its development of AI, algorithms and computer vision for advanced software and hardware solutions which can achieve a “fundamentally new customer experience in all sectors and formats of the retail industry.”

“Supersmart’s AI-based solution analyzes transactions on base of weigh checks and video analytics to guarantee fraud detection and increase loss prevention,” Tudor Andronic, Chairman of the board, Supersmart, and Vice President Global Retail, Bizerba, tells PackagingInsights.

This smart solution also has a unique statistical engine for products, consumers and shopping baskets, which tracks parameters over time. From this, deep learning algorithms are constantly applied, which connect the shopping cart with the products inside.

For a detailed demonstration of the technology in action, see Supersmart’s video here.

“As strategic investor in Supersmart, Bizerba has the global distribution rights for the Supersmart solution, industrializes the solution and makes it globally deployable and scalable,” Andronic says.

The companies believe that there are many economic benefits to be achieved from a more optimized shopping process. This includes the reduction of product losses and inventory discrepancies and shorter waiting and handling times at the checkout.

“The main target of the solution is to guarantee fraud detection and increase loss prevention,” adds Andronic. “The target of the solution is not to reduce employment in these workplaces. We offer a big chance for the retailers to use the existing resources to do more valuable activities.”

“What’s more, our solution empowers the customer to correct their mistakes on their own, while the retailer is empowered to offer a better shopping experience for the customers.”

Andronic tells PackagingInsights that the Supersmart technology has already launched across global retail markets. “There are different rollouts and pilots already running. Our main focus is supermarket and cash & carry-stores, convenience stores and pop-up stores.”

Supermarkets can be transformed into digitally-enhanced and ultra-convenient retail operations in a matter of hours using Supersmart’s smart technology. “The solution is versatile in enabling the implementation as whole or only relevant modules in already existing self-scanning and self-checkout environments,” Andronic notes.

“We strive to develop new technologies and expand our product portfolio,” adds Andreas Wilhelm Kraut, CEO, Bizerba. “Our successful history as a system provider exclusively results from our courage and our ability to innovate. Even in our fifth generation, I remain true to the values of our family, and this is why I support innovative, groundbreaking cooperations like the one with Supersmart.”

“The partnership with Supersmart not only enables the optimization of processes centered around trading fresh goods and all kinds of retail formats as well as the implementation of different customer strategies in the physical and digital world,” continues Andronic. “Based on our cooperation, we can offer solutions that are comparatively inexpensive and quick and easy to operate. Together, we have implemented and successfully marketed solutions that are still tested as pilot or trial concepts by other technology providers,” he concludes.

Digital evolutions within the grocery sector
The partnership comes at a time when connected packaging technologies based on unique digital codes will take both online and offline grocery in exciting new directions during the next few years, as predicted by the Tetra Pak Index 2018.

“The key to this technology is digital printing, which makes it possible to print unique digital codes on each and every package,” Alexandre Carvalho, Global Marketing Services Director at Tetra Pak, tells PackagingInsights.

Carvalho pinpoints China and Korea as leaders of “disruptive innovation” in the grocery space. In China, for example, “… smart packaging with features that enable digital purchase and an enhanced consumer experience is highly regarded. It is also welcomed by retailers in the region as it allows them to experiment with new business models and payment methods.”

“In Saudi Arabia promotions are important, and also in the US where consumers are focused on saving money, with coupons and vouchers playing a key part of consumers choice of retailer,” Carvalho adds.

In terms of industry players, Amazon is highlighted as being a key player in the reinvention of physical retail, “both through its acquisition of Whole Foods and also its Amazon Go checkout-free concept store [which is] selling ready-to-eat foods, meal kits and grocery essentials, including its own brands, such as Wickedly Prime,” Carvaldo says.

“Similar moves are happening in China, which is setting the pace globally for omnichannel retail innovation. Alibaba first announced its ‘New Retail’ concept – integrating online, offline, logistics and data across a single value chain – back in 2016,” he notes.

SmartLabel: Enabling product information transparency
More than 7 in 10 shoppers want to find out more about the grocery products they buy than they are currently able to get with traditional on-package labels, according to a new US survey.

Roger Lowe, Executive Vice President, Strategic Communications at GMI tells PackagingInsights: “SmartLabel is a way to meet the growing consumer demand for additional product information, more than could ever fit on a package label. And the digital access – via a QR code, an app or online – matches how today’s consumers are shopping and researching the products they buy and use.”

SmartLabel has already been adopted by many leading companies, including Unilever, Kelloggs, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. “SmartLabel is already on nearly 28,000 food, beverage, personal care and household products, and projections are that it will continue to be added to more and more products in the months ahead. This is a huge increase from the 4,000 products at the beginning of 2017,” Lowe adds.

By Joshua Poole