Businesses have more data than ever about their operations, supply chains and customers. The problem is often they can’t see it, don’t know where it is, and don’t have an easy want to pull it all together and analyze it. So, they are unable to make smart decisions and can lose thousands of dollars a year. It’s a challenge restaurant franchisors such as CraftWorks Restaurants and Breweries Inc. face. CraftWorks has found a solution, though—OnDemand software from ArrowStream. + Also on Network World: 8 big data predictions for 2017 +
OnDemand does the “dirty work” of collecting data from food distributors, cleaning the data, analyzing it and putting the information front and center for supply chain restaurant managers, said Jeff Dorr, chief customer officer of ArrowStream. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you warehouse and ship billions of pounds of food in the U.S.—food that is sold in Walmart, Costco and your local grocery store—food safety is a priority. Product must be protected and in the most energy-efficient way possible. That’s the challenge Lineage Logistics faces daily. A food processing, warehousing and distribution company, Lineage Logistics controls 20 to 25 percent of the U.S. third-party cold food chain, said Elliot Wolf, director of analytics at the San Francisco-based company. “We move an average of 20 billion to 30 billion pounds of food through our warehouses each year,” he said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Assembling a smart city dream teamIncreasingly, cities are adopting smart technology to become more energy efficient, improve transportation, make neighborhoods safer, manage traffic—basically use technology and the data it generates to create better places to live, work and visit.As they do so, they’re discovering they need specialists to head the new departments that the smart technology is enabling. And many have created new C-level executives, such as chief bicycle officer, chief innovation officer, chief data officer and chief citizen officer—to name a few. What follows is a look at nine of the newest C-level positions smart cities are creating.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Fifty miles south of Boston, the Internet of Things is taking hold in the City of New Bedford, Massachusetts.It isn’t something you’d expect in this fishing and agricultural area. But thanks to INEX IoT Impact Labs, Dell and the companies’ many IoT partners, small and midsize enterprises here are discovering the power of IoT-enabled sensors and monitoring—and the data that comes from them.There’s a type of industrial revival taking place among those types of businesses—taking current infrastructure and renovating it with new technology, says Christopher Rezendes, founder of INEX. They’re recognizing how this technology can help them solve real business problems and do it without having to spend a lot of money.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Wheels turning and forklifts filled—that’s one measure of success in any warehouse. If you can increase the amount of product picked up and put away, the more productive and cost efficient you are.For Pittsburgh-based retailer Giant Eagle, the key to making that happen is to operate vision-guided, autonomous vehicles—robots—in its distribution centers.+ Also on Network World: How IoT helps transplant surgeons track organ shipments +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You’d think that with a 3-year-old building, its fixtures and systems would be among the best on the market. Not necessarily so. As Atlas Global Solutions found out after conducting an energy audit of a relatively new manufacturing facility, the light fixtures were costing them more than aging manufacturing equipment—the focus of the energy audit. + Also on Network World: How the IoT keeps Ben & Jerry’s ice cream safe +Atlas, a global protective packaging company based in Sutton, Mass., knew its 200,000-sq.-ft. manufacturing facility was not as energy efficient as it could be, said Frank Tavares, the global process engineer for the company. He never thought the biggest waste would be from the lights in the building, though.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
How technology is transforming the fashion industryThe ideas flowing through designers’ minds are difficult to capture. Transforming precisely what they think and draw into tangible pieces of work can be laborious and time consuming. And the artists can become frustrated when what they produce doesn’t come out exactly as they imagine it.Technology has eliminated that struggle for many designers. Through the use of multi-material 3D printers, laser cutters and digital printers that print on material, designers are creating fashions exactly as they see them in their mind’s eye. Plus, the new tools enable them to create intricate designs that are impossible to make by hand.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
And then there was one.Out of the seven finalists in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, Columbus, Ohio, emerged the winner this week. The city will receive $50 million in grants from the DOT and Vulcan Inc. to implement its smart city plan.Columbus will also receive about $90 million in local matching funds, including $19 million in public money. That gives the city a total of $140 million to upgrade its transportation network.“This grant, combined with its public-private investment, will help reshape the transportation sector in central Ohio for decades to come,” U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) said in a statement. It “will help meet the transportation needs of Ohioans who live in the low-income neighborhoods in and around Columbus to ensure they can get to their job, or receive a good education.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Self-driving vehicles, traffic lights that adjust based on vehicle flow, bike sharing and smart pavement that provides public Wi-Fi access—those are just a few of the ideas for making cities smarter.
Not only have municipalities embraced the smart city concept—using technology to manage a city’s assets, improve the efficiency of services, reduce consumption of resources, reduce costs and improve the quality of life—but many are making it a reality.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has joined in to help cities implement smart city ideas, and it is offering a $40 million grant to the winner of its Smart Cities Challenge. The prize will go to the city that has the best plan for integrating innovative technologies such as self-driving cars, connected vehicles and smart sensors into their transportation network.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If a dropped ice cream cone is one of the saddest images in the world, then the loss of tens of thousands of dollars of ice cream—especially Ben & Jerry’s ice cream—is a tragedy.
It’s also a huge financial hit, and one that Udder Ventures experienced when a new walk-in freezer malfunctioned at its Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shop in the Haight-Asbury section of San Francisco.
The equipment wasn’t installed perfectly—it wasn’t localized for temperature variances in San Francisco properly, said John Slater, Udder Ventures’ chief euphoria officer (the managing member of the company). So, it kept tripping the system, and when the system tripped, the freezer shut off—and the ice cream melted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Michelle Davidson