Smart stores: The search for answers is on

The movable robot, flexible in three axes, is able to handle the goods from the frozen food warehouse to the output and can even drive around the curve (page 29)

The search for answers is on

Who will sell baked goods in the future and how? This is a question that interests not only marketing people but also cost accountants. New solutions are emerging.

+Which plus points that sales concepts offer today will consumers still perceive as benefits in the future? How quickly will customers react if they don’t get what they want or when they want it, or if the act of sale is not convenient or fast enough? How important will new hygiene concepts be for the delivery and payment of the goods? All these questions are becoming increasingly urgent in light of online competition that can deliver.

In European food retailing, attempts are currently underway to digitize the recording of sales at self-service bakery stores using cameras and scales, thus generating faster responses and lowering personnel costs. A development from Bavaria goes much further, employing the use of artificial intelligence and robotics for automation solutions in bakeries.

If needed, it can automate all processes, from the removal of the dough pieces from the frozen storage facility and the baking process to the presentation of the goods and the care/cleaning of the output trays. The user can decide whether partial or total automation is used, and what and how much of this process is visible to the buyer of the baked goods. This makes the system interesting not only for supermarkets but also for chain bakeries, which can use parts of it to relieve staff. But it can also be used to think of a pure vending machine solution that offers freshly baked goods 24 hours a day, for example, at transport hubs or in the cafeterias of large companies. One thing is certain, the pandemic has kicked off the change processes with full force.

Baking shop in food retail: camera or scales?

The majority of baking stations in food retailing are filled with goods that are delivered deep-frozen and baked in the ovens on-site or just defrosted. The stocking of the self-service shelves is calculated in advance with a great deal of data from empirical values, past checkout events, weather forecasts, the expected influence of special events, organized sales promotions, etc. The data is then used to calculate the number of baked goods on the shelves.

But no matter how well the algorithms predict demand, weaknesses remain and they commonly arise from: 1. Despite all the planning, the supply does not meet demand. 2. The presentation of the goods is anything but tempting. 3. The personnel, who are supposed to implement the presentation plans, are overwhelmed with other tasks, poorly paid and/or unmotivated.

The result: sales are not closed and the pull effect of the baking station, whose attractiveness is supposed to draw customers into the stores and generate other sales, suffers. There is an increased risk that customers will leave or switch to online delivery services because, in case of doubt, they have time to bake the desired product fresh in their

distribution center and thus deliver exactly what customers want, crisp and fragrant, to their door.

The fact that these weak points exist has something to do with the product itself. Baked goods age quickly, change their appearance, crumble or leave grease and other stains, which does not exactly make them more tempting for the customer. In fact, it would be necessary to keep a permanent eye on the bakery shelf and its sales, especially since in supermarkets they are often placed at the beginning of the customer’s run and it can take a long time before the sale is recorded at the checkout, if it gets there at all. Customer behavior is another problem that stands in the way of precise sales control, on the one hand, and the permanent presence of the products at the aisle, on the other. Merchandise may be positioned in the back, in the right or wrong compartment, with or without packaging or the tongs or glove that should actually be used to lift the item.

In the past, having full shelves until the closing time was considered a customer magnet and, because of low acquisition costs, items discarded after closing time were not considered a painful cost driver. It wasn’t until the advent of public campaigns against food waste that the perspective turned. Nevertheless, having staff permanently checking the shelves is expensive and hard to find given the working conditions. There are, therefore, two trial arrangements currently in the retail sector to digitally capture what is happening in the retailer’s output compartments.

Cameras from SES-Imagotag

One option comes from the French SES Group, whose Ettenheim, Germany-based subsidiary SESImagotag launched a camera-based solution in early 2021 as part of a shelf management system. It reports that this is now in use in several supermarkets in France, the UK and Spain.

The store operator defines the number of compartments to be monitored as well as the quantity and duration of the desired availability of goods. Every half hour, the cameras take a picture of the goods in the output compartments. Special software compares the captured images with predefined ones. The software, which evaluates the recorded images, recognizes not the number of items, but the percentage fill level of the compartment, and also anomalies – i.e. incorrect or foreign products in the compartment – based on learned images, and alerts the responsible employee if necessary. The software’s continuous learning process ensures ever greater precision and optimization of the comparison.

The dashboard of the SES Imagotag solution

Craft bakers as suppliers

© Aldi Süd

© Aldi Süd

Discounters and supermarkets in Germanspeaking Europe are increasingly trying to make their baked goods ranges more attractive by offering shelves for regional chain stores. It is not uncommon for the goods to be delivered fresh, eliminating the need for baking. The name of the chain store instills confidence in consumers and higher prices are accepted. How much of this reaches the chain store is a matter of negotiation because it is usually the supplier whose influence ends at the ramp. Only rarely do retailers accept that the baker has the entire value chain in his hands. The Aldi Süd Group has equipped more than two-thirds of its locations in Germany with such offers. Aldi Nord is currently following suit. Other retail groups are also cooperating with local artisans. In northern Germany, the organic bakery Bahde, based in Seevetal, is one of those that have dipped into the market and has had its own shelves in Edeka and Rewe supermarkets for some time. In Switzerland, Lidl cooperates with bakeries under the heading ‘Von Deinem Beck’ and in Austria, too, Lidl maintains regional cooperation with chain stores. The importance of artisanal chain stores for image and sales in the baked goods market has been appreciated and recognized by retailers, especially in German-speaking countries for a while and the idea has now gone global. Aldi Australia, for example, is cooperating in its new convenience stores in the Sydney area with Sonoma Bakery, a chain bakery that operates in New South Wales and calls itself Artisan Sourdough Bakers.

© Lidl Schweiz

© SES Imagotag

A small camera regularly transmits a picture of the respective bakery shop shelf With the appropriate link to the control of oven occupancy and baking process, post-baking processes can also be triggered automatically. Links with the merchandise management system are also possible, as are links with digital price labels that adapt to the inventory according to predefined rules.

According to Michael Unmüßig, Managing Director of SES -Imagotag Deutschland GmbH, initial evaluations of nearly 50 stores in which SES camera systems are installed showed an average improvement in merchandise availability from 92% to 98% and a 6% increase in sales. The actual data recording also shows clear indications of a reduction in disposal volumes. A detailed evaluation will be available at the end of 2021.

Scales at Billa Plus

Rewe Group in Austria is testing the installation of scales under the goods display areas in Billa Plus stores. Every time a piece of pastry is picked, a computer is notified. The system collects this information and promptly sends a message to the dashboard of the responsible staff member when a predefined threshold is reached. It is envisaged that, in the future, the computer will also be able to trigger the oven when the threshold is reached. There is currently no direct networking of the computer with the checkout system or the merchandise management system, but this is being considered.

Digitization in retail

The digitization strategies of retailers are currently in full swing. Most groups are well advanced in the area of marketing and communication with customers. Social media channels are being used, apps are being designed to retain customers, and it is being made easier for customers to shop online and, incidentally, obtain data. The growing willingness of younger consumers, in particular, to pay digitally is arousing retailers’ interest in automated store concepts, especially in locations where large numbers of walk-in customers want to be served quickly. Valora in Switzerland, for example, is currently testing automated sales and payment solutions in convenience stores. It says it could also envisage such solutions in the form of automated shelving for offices, for example, and automated shop-in-shop concepts. Valora owns convenience stores in high-frequency locations, pretzel specialists Ditsch and Brezelkönig, and the BackWerk chain of bakery restaurants in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, all together some 3,000 outlets. Various other retailers already offer customers the option of speeding up their payment process by scanning the goods using a smartphone or handheld scanner provided by the store. The pandemic has boosted interest among consumers in online retailing in the food sector. In addition to traditional delivery services, so-called fast delivery services such as Gorillas, Flink and Getir are currently making headlines in Europe. They promise delivery within 10 minutes of receiving the order via smartphone. Deliveries are made exclusively to urban centers by bicycle courier from decentralized small warehouses. The assortment is based on supermarkets but only includes around 1,000 items. At the beginning of August, the Czech Rohlik Group launched its Knuspr delivery service in Munich. The service focuses on daily freshness and regionality, to offer a wide range of supermarket and farm shop products that are delivered to the doorstep within three hours of the order being placed. The promotional promise for baked goods says: “With us, you get oven-fresh baked goods

© Rewe Group Austria At Billa Plus in Austria, scales monitor the fill level of the output trays

from our own bakery or from the best bakers and confectioners in the region.” According to press reports, Gopuff, the forefather of all quick delivery services, which has so far only handled deliveries in the USA, is also in the starting blocks for the European market. A large and highly advanced field of digitization and automation in retail is the entire supply chain, from the connection to manufacturers’ systems via logistics and warehousing to the presence of goods in the store. This now includes self-learning forecasts that can take more and more factors into account, automatic inventory management and the distribution of master data. For packaged goods, all of this is normal today, even if huge volumes of data are generated in the process, for example for products that are on the shelf in various packaging sizes and are additionally or seasonally offered in special areas with different content quantities and prices. Fresh produce such as fruit and vegetables, whose shelf life generally extends beyond the day, and service counters are also digitally integrated into the merchandise management system. A rather young field is the optimization of the presence of goods at the point of sale, their recognizability, their accessibility and the question of whether the goods are available where the customer expects them. Here, too, cameras and other sensor technology are used, which feed their data to a cloud where changes or optimization of merchandise presence are calculated. At the same time, they are networked and automatically report inventories to the merchandise management system. Digitization at the POS naturally also includes digital price tags, which allow prices to be adjusted within the day, thus reducing waste. Digital advertising spaces, promotional notices and the linking of all these things with customer communication before, during and after the purchase round off the possibilities for making the range more attractive to customers on an ad hoc basis. However, the greatest benefit is promised by the networking of all these information systems.

THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS IS ON

Smart shelf at Billa in Austria. The Bizerba scales in the output compartments report every sale Oven

The system only calculates in weights and also only recognizes the difference in weight. Therefore, there is a clearly defined plan of the type of pastries that are offered in each compartment. The corresponding average weights of the item are stored in the computer. If an item is deposited in the wrong compartment, the employee recognizes the incorrectly calculated item number based on the display on the dashboard, unless the items have the same weight.

Pastry residues such as crumbs, grains, etc. usually have only small weights that are below the tolerance limit. This is defined as a percentage of the respective average weight of the item. Otherwise, it is the responsibility of the employees to regularly clean the pastry trays and remove tongs, bags, or similar items that have mistakenly landed in the trays. If a customer puts a pastry item back in the wrong compartment, the same applies as in the case of an incorrectly filled compartment. This means that it is only noticed if a difference in weight to the pastry item intended at the location becomes visible.

The goods delivered to Billa’s baking stations are deep-frozen. Whether a product is baked, when and in what quantity, depends on the definition of the threshold value, the baking time, the tray occupancy plan, but also on staff deployment, structural conditions and other site-specific requirements. Currently, the system Rewe is testing at Billa still relies heavily on staff presence and attention. Work is currently underway on automatic baking plans that take into account both sales and markdowns, to account for goods that should theoretically still be available but are not in reality, as the scale shows.

When asked, Rewe Austria stated that there are currently no further concrete rollout plans. The test has not yet been completed.

Upgrading with AI and robotics – the future of sales

Artificial intelligence and robotics bring more efficiency in sales for chain stores and baking stations – and without having to change the market presence. In the Bavarian town of Gallmersgarten, a cooperation of various experts has resulted in a solution that has what it takes to catapult bakery sales into a digitalized and automated age. The good thing about it is that, unlike the failed vending machine solution of a German discounter at the time, it does not represent a break with consumers’ shopping experiences. What’s more,

it can be introduced partially and gradually at individual locations and brings greater efficiency right from the start.

The team around EngRoTec Systems GmbH focused primarily on the processes behind the goods issue. Every step was examined for automation possibilities and solutions were developed for various requirements, which can be installed either individually or step by step, building on each other. The result is an automatically loaded shelf for bakery goods that can be varied in many ways, including on oven and cooling capacities. How much a customer standing in front oft he bakery shelf will notice, the supplier decides. Werner Huprich, head of the lead company EngRoTec Systems GmbH: “It was important to us that each bakery supplier decides what runs automatically and what runs manually. A chain store has a completely different need for flexibility and the presentation of its craftsmanship than a retailer at its baking station. We can cater to both. We can even think of a pure vending solution that offers freshly baked goods 24 hours a day, for example at transport hubs or in the canteens of large companies.”

The heart of the system is a movable robot with three flexible axes that transport the goods from the warehouse via the oven to the sales outlet and can also move around corners. The goods travel into the oven on belts; otherwise, they lie on trays on which they can also be temporarily stored in buffers. The exact counterpart of the trays in the goods issue area is, in turn, stored on weighing cells and is itself movable via gears so that when the goods are fed in, they are not simply thrown in, but are moved in gently to protect the product.

The brain of the plant is an Artificial Intelligence system that controls all the stations involved and processes the information generated there. The system is freely programmable and at the same time self-learning. If a special case occurs at any point, for example, if baguettes are suddenly in extremely high demand because the weather is conducive for people to picnic, the AI is able to redirect the entire process so that more baguettes are produced until the demand subsides.

The solution

The solution essentially consists of technology, robots and artificial intelligence. Its charm lies in the fact that the composition and the layout are flexible, making custom solutions possible. The solution is usable for retail bakeries as well as for chain bakeries thar want to automate only part of their presentation. A 24-h-shop running exclusively with a vending machine is also possible. Even manual work on the oven can be integrated, whether on an hourly or permanent basis. Personnel requirements are reduced to a few hours per day for placing the goods and cleaning, with basic cleaning being carried out permanently by the system itself. Unsold products can be disposed of automatically at defined times. The operator can determine which process steps should be in the customer’s field of vision.

Technology

+ Storage capacities with the possibility of automatic unloading for goods delivered chilled, ambient or frozen. + Feeding stations of various designs and capacities, where the goods are either manually placed for baking according to a predefined positioning scheme, or handled fully automatically using grippers, or are prepared for baking in complete sheet loads. Loads prepared in this way can go directly into the oven or into a temperature-controlled buffer. + Different ovens from different manufacturers, including the vacuum oven UDO from

Cetravac; their control will be integrated into the main control system so that the baking programs can be adjusted to the fill level of the oven. A vacuum deck oven is currently being worked on. + Product-specific presentation racks in various sizes and with different removal options such as flaps for direct intervention, or the solution where the desired product is maneuvered into a dispensing channel with a rod. Chutes for large quantities are also conceivable. For 24-hour operation, the system is also available

Top: Finished goods are gently pushed into the output compartments by the robot so that damage is largely avoided Left: If required, the robot stores goods in a cold storage unit

Various dispensing options can be used; here, the customer has to push the desired pastry sideways out of the presentation in order to be able to bag it. Flaps for direct removal are also conceivable

The task can be done manually. A screen specifies how the goods must be placed on the belts. With an automated solution, this step is also left to the robot The belts on which the goods are transported and presented are not rigid, but independently driven, so that the goods move into the customers' field of vision and do not slide or get piled up

in a version that is safe against vandalism. The goods lie in the compartments on white belts under which load cells check the fill level. The belts can be moved by sprocket wheels made of hardened steel so that the goods are always in the field of vision and any crumbs are disposed of. The belts can be replaced without tools and are easy to clean. + Buffers at the various interfaces of technology and robots.

Robotics

The worker in the system is a robot with mobility in the axes x/y/z, which can handle sheets, trays, paper supports or place the goods on belts. The robot itself can rotate if necessary. The position is freely programmable so that any position can be controlled. The robot can rotate and thus also serve an ‘around the corner’ store design. It retrieves occupied trays from the infeed station, transfers their occupancy to the oven, and picks up the goods after baking, transporting them to buffers or directly to the outfeed station. Depending on the height of the shelf to be filled, it can tilt the trays so that the goods move gently into the outfeed compartment without risk of being bumped. An additional function of the robot is the automatic cleaning of storage and oven belts.

Artificial Intelligence

An industrial control system of the latest generation is used to control the entire process with a self-learning product management system. Artificial intelligence picks up the signals from the weighing cells in the output compartments and sets the production of the replenishment in motion in good time. If the products are placed manually, a visual or acoustic signal is transmitted to the employee. Sensors monitor the docking of the robot with other system parts.

Access control to system parameters can be differentiated via various authorization levels. Software changes and support are available via remote maintenance. The control system is networked to the company’s existing networks via an Ethernet interface.

The think tank behind the solution

Process optimization through automation and process control through artificial intelligence are the headlines under which the participants came together, from thoroughly heterogeneous backgrounds, at first glance. The linchpin is EngRoTec Systems GmbH, part of the homonymous industrial group whose core competence lies in the development of automated production and goods systems, including the development of hardware and IT. The group is strongly represented by various subsidiaries in the automotive and packaging industries as well as in mechanical engineering. At its helm in Gallmersgarten is Werner Huprich, who not only has experience from various industrial companies, but is also behind the first bakery vending machine, which once marked the entry of discount retailers into the sale of unpackaged baked goods.

EngRoTec’s partner is Cetravac AG from Switzerland, which builds equipment for vacuum conditioning of baked goods that is now successfully used in many leading chain stores. Two years ago, the company also introduced a vacuum oven that, according to the manufacturer, uses superheated steam, vacuum and infrared heating to significantly shorten the in-store baking process compared to conventional ovens, stabilizing the goods and cooling them down to ‘touch and cut’ temperature.

Third in the group are the specialists from BakeXperts, an international network of professionals specializing in technical and technological consulting for bakery companies worldwide. The focus is on the design, realization or reorganization of production capacities and the optimization of operating processes. +++

Author

f2m, editorial team

THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS IS ON