The Project

Caas: Cooling as a Service

Beacons, freezers, refrigerators, and cold rooms make up the ecosystem of the Syos Platform, a startup that expands temperature information to reduce food waste, increase food safety, and bring to supermarkets greater energy efficiency. Outracoisa* was invited to investigate the chain and its stakeholders and design a digital product based on the defined value proposition.

The Challenge

Generating value for the supermarket

Rarely has the outracoisa* team started a project with so little knowledge of the industry in which the product would be inserted. The challenge was both limited and comprehensive. Limited because the work would focus specifically on temperature data from various supermarket refrigerators. And comprehensive because the solution would come from a comprehensive investigation of how this data would generate the greatest value for the business. The research covered the entire refrigerated and frozen food chain, as well as equipment maintenance, with the goal of providing operational insights for managing healthier foods.

The Process

Shopping cart-free supermarket visits

Our process began with field research, where we observed the dynamics of different supermarkets and interviewed stakeholders from the supply chain to product sales, exploring opportunities and pain points for effective refrigerated/frozen food management. We defined acceptable metrics and designed three phases for implementing processes and routines that would reduce waste and improve food safety.

With the premises aligned, we began developing product resolution hypotheses and defining the structure for creating real value for supermarkets.

Product Key

Intelligence: Moving from discard to promotion

The project's objective was to create a beta version that could run in hundreds of Grupo Pão de Açúcar supermarkets. Successfully completed, the work is never finished, as platforms like Syos are never 100% ready.

With the project delivered, the supermarket chain has access to a comprehensive diagnosis of the condition of refrigerated/frozen products, within a graphical platform that signals the immediate removal of substandard products; ensures optimal utilization of all machinery; reduces equipment maintenance costs and time; and also provides strategic insights for developing planned and instant promotions.

The Solution

Transforming data into information

The Syos Platform consists of a web dashboard and an application for supermarket maintenance and operations professionals. The dashboard provides important statistics, showing the pulse of what's happening in a given region or across the entire country, depending on the user's permissions. It also allows for tasks related to specific stores or refrigerators, but the main mechanics are based on alerts: We define a color palette representing different levels of severity, an index that takes into account the disparity between the ideal and current temperatures, and the duration of noncompliance.

A single beacon in a refrigerator (sometimes eight, nine, ten, or more per unit) generates 1,440 records about the temperature in the internal area it covers. In other words, a lot of data and little information. We parameterized the information curves, aggregated the ideal temperature, the time spent at these temperatures, and, of course, the conditions of each item.

Results

Intelligence: Moving from discard to promotion

The project's objective was to create a beta version that could run in hundreds of supermarkets within the Pão de Açúcar Group. Successfully completed, the work is never finished, as platforms like Syos are never 100% ready.

With the project delivered, the supermarket chain has access to a comprehensive diagnosis of the condition of refrigerated/frozen products, within a graphical platform, which signals the immediate removal of substandard products; the best use of all machinery; reduction of equipment maintenance costs and times; and strategically define information to implement planned and instant promotions.