New Efficiencies Will Combat Product Loss and Improve Employee Productivity for Wisconsin’s Largest Independent Grocer
MINNETONKA, Minn., Nov. 27, 2018 – SmartSense by Digi®, a division of Digi International® (NASDAQ: DGII, www.digi.com) focused on Internet of Things (IoT)-based condition monitoring, today announced that Festival Foods, one of Wisconsin’s largest privately-held grocers, has selected SmartSense for task management and continuous temperature monitoring across all its locations. The implementations are being made to help improve food quality and safety, increase employee efficiency and reduce inventory loss.
Founded as a single store by Paul and Jane Skogen in 1946, Festival Foods now operates 32 locations and has more than 7,500 employees across Wisconsin. Still entirely family- and employee-owned, Festival Foods’ customer service and value ethos continue to fuel the company.
SmartSense food safety solutions were selected for implementation across Festival Foods’ 32 locations after a 30-day pilot that included real-time, product-level monitoring in all refrigeration units, food temperature monitoring in deli sections and automated task management. In addition to helping guarantee food safety, the combination of continuous, accurate temperature readings and automated record-keeping saves thousands of dollars and employee hours per year by reducing lost inventory and manual tasks. In year two of the deployment, Festival Foods expects to realize a 300% return on its annual investment.
“SmartSense is a proactive approach to equipment maintenance and food safety that gives us the operational oversight we need to improve our bottom line and serve our guests better than ever,” said Hsing-Yi Hsieh, Festival Foods director of food protection and regulatory affairs. “Now, every store has real-time access to temperature and food safety data at the product level, and we’re able to get ahead of any potential issues well before they become a reality.”
“So often in the food safety conversation we only hear about foodborne illness and potential contaminations, and while preventing those scenarios is paramount, there are also tremendous business benefits behind food safety solutions” said Kevin C. Riley, President, IoT Solutions, Digi International. “Festival Foods recognized that in addition to helping guarantee compliance, they had an opportunity to reduce product loss and divert valuable man hours from tedious manual recordkeeping to tasks that more directly impact customer experience. They’ve already seen those results in their pilot and now that will spread across the Festival footprint.”
With SmartSense by Digi, food-based businesses can quickly deploy remote monitoring to improve productivity, compliance and quality control. Designed to deliver real-time insights, SmartSense by Digi provides an efficient subscription-based service that continuously and wirelessly monitors task management activities and the temperature of perishable, high-value goods in different industries such as food services, healthcare, transportation and logistics or retail.
For more information visit: http://www.smartsense.co
About Festival Foods
Founded in 1946 as Skogen's IGA, Festival Foods is a Wisconsin family- and employee-owned grocer that is committed to giving back to the communities it serves and to providing guests with exceptional service and value. The company began operating as Festival Foods in 1990 and today employs more than 7,500 full- and part-time associates. Festival Foods currently operates 32 full-service supermarkets across the state of Wisconsin.
For more information about Festival Foods, visit: https://www.festfoods.com/
About Digi International
Digi International (NASDAQ: DGII) is a leading global provider of business and mission-critical Internet of Things (IoT) and M2M products and services. We help our customers create next-generation connected products and deploy and manage critical communications infrastructures in demanding environments with high levels of security, relentless reliability and bulletproof performance. Founded in 1985, we’ve helped our customers connect over 100 million things, and growing. For more information, visit Digi's website at www.digi.com, or call 877-912-3444 (U.S.) or 952-912-3444 (International).
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