Hitachi Digital Services and OneThird Fight Supermarket Food Waste with First-Of-Its-Kind Digital Solution
January 22, 2024 at 09:00 am EST
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Hitachi Digital Services is supporting food waste prevention specialists OneThird in the development of a breakthrough solution tackling the global food waste crisis. OneThird selected Digital Services from Hitachi Vantara, now a new entity known as Hitachi Digital Services, to combine its Azure cloud and application expertise with their in-depth understanding of sensing and AI technology and together they created a real-time data insights platform to enable a smarter and more flexible food supply chain. The solution enables fresh produce supply chains to prevent significant waste of produce - 25% at least - while also saving on the associated cost of those losses.
The insights obtained from the scanning data enable retailers to: Consider the best distribution routes based on produce shelf life and customer specifications; Repurpose items to food banks or processing instead of having produce rejected by shoppers due to short shelf life; provide best before and expiration dates based on actual shelf life rather than default values; and, Apply discounts in-store if produce shelf life is near expiration and better manage stock by placing items with a longer shelf life towards the back. The technology is already available for use by those working across the food supply chain, from growers to distributors. In addition, multiple European retailers are currently in talks to install the technology in-store, while all are already using the scanning devices within their supply chains.
The technology is already available to use by those working across the Food supply chain, from growers to distributor. In addition, multiple European retailer are currently in talks to install The technology in-store, while All are already using the scanning devices in their supply chains. The technology has been overwhelming, and the company aim to accelerate the deployment of technology globally.
The insights obtained from the scan data enable retailers to: Consider The best distribution routes based on produce shelves and customer specifications; Repurposed items to food banks or processing rather of having produce rejected by shoppers Due to short shelf life; Provide best before and expiration dates based On actual shelf life rather than default value; and, apply discounts in-store if produce shelves is near expiration and better manage Stock by placing items with a longer shelves towards the back.
Hitachi specializes in manufacturing and marketing of electronic and industrial equipments. Net sales (including intragroup) break down by family of products and services as follows:
- social infrastructure and industrial systems (24.7%): elevators, escalators, industrial facilities, railway systems, power generation units, etc. The group also provides engineering and construction of nuclear, hydroelectric, and thermal power plants services;
- information and telecommunications products and services (20.1%): systems integration, cloud computing, software, servers, hard disks, PCs, ATMs, data communication base stations, payment terminals, etc.;
- materials and components (16.6%): semi-conductor materials, printed circuit cards, cables, copper and forged steel products, magnetic materials, organic and inorganic chemical products, etc.;
- construction equipment (10%) : hydraulic excavators, wheel loaders, mining equipment, etc.;
- automotive systems (9.4%): powertrain systems, control systems, etc.;
- electronic products (9.2%): fiber-optic components, screen tubes, testing and measurement equipment, medical equipment, equipment for manufacturing semiconductors, etc.;
- household appliances (4.7%): heating and air conditioning equipments, refrigerators, washing machines, etc.;
- other (5.3%): mainly transport, financial and logistical services.
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Japan (49.2%), Asia (21.3%), North America (12.7%), Europe (10.8%) and other (6%).
HITACHI, LTD. 
