With over 3000 Americans dying each year from food borne diseases and 128, 000 being hospitalized,  keeping the fresh food supply safe is an enormous challenge. Verizon Enterprise has taken the initiative to bring light to the issue of food safety, as well as the current technical and process challenges that continue to impact humans and our fresh food supply. The issue is so large, that to put it in pure economic terms, the USDA estimates the amount of food loss in the U.S. alone each year totals more than $161B.  And the industry simply accepts these losses as the cost of doing business. Verizon became involved in sensor and tracking technology a couple of years ago when they sat down with healthcare customer and asked them how they could help them be more efficient and effective with their business. They started to hear recurring themes in the pharmaceutical space about needing to be able to track in real time shipments of medicines that are compliant with the federal government regulations. They wanted to know the progress, the location, the temperature and a variety of other information that is required as they ship product around the US. They realized they were uniquely positioned to get involved with asset tracking in a bigger way. The soon translated these learnings from Pharma to food by talking to fisherman who were losing money because so many different people were involved with the farm-to-fork delivery of their product. Food quality is important, but if something happens to the fish during transit, the fishermen get blamed. Fishermen were looking for ways to protect the quality of what they deliver. Verizon understands the importance of tracking the temperature of fish from its catch to either the restaurant or retailer. Temperature control of fresh seafood (or any other perishable) is critically important for food safety. In fact, researchers have found that one of the largest challenges associated with food safety and food waste is related to controlling and monitoring the consistency of food temperatures throughout the cold chain.

You’ve likely heard the phrase “Internet of Things” — or IoT — at some point, and you might also be scratching your head figuring out what it is or what it means. IoT – the current ‘buzz’ term for connected or ‘smart’ devices, refers to rapidly growing network of connected objects that are able to collect and exchange data using embedded sensors. The IoT is connecting more devices every day, we’re headed for a world that will have 24 billion IoT devices by 2020. According to a recent report from Gartner, Inc., the number of connected IoT devices is forecast to reach 8.4 billion by the end of 2017 – up 31 percent from 2016. Here are some examples: Wearables (Fitbit) – that sends data on your daily activity to online servers, which could then be viewed on your smartphone. Smart Home (Amazon Alexa) – that learn and adapt to your lifestyle, adjusting temperatures in the home for comfort or energy efficiency. Smart TV (Samsung) – that can stream music, videos or photos from online services or other computers in the home. It can also interact with other smart devices, for example, displaying content from baby monitors and security cameras. So chances are, if your using any of these connected devices, you’re already involved with the ‘Internet of Things.’ These devices show how IoT can add convenience to our lives, and ultimately offer us more control over the things we interact with every day. How IoT devices work – Connected devices typically connect to the Internet through a home Wi-Fi network and router. These connected devices can sometimes talk to other related devices on the same home network and act on the information they get from one another. People can interact with the connected devices to set them up, give them instructions or access data, but the devices do most of the work on their own. All of this is made possible by tiny, embedded mobile components that allow almost anything to become ‘connected’. They rely on the always-online nature of our home and business networks, and often process data online via cloud-based software where huge amounts of data from many different users can be analyzed together. Internet of Things devices have an extremely broad range of applications across almost all industries, other benefits across a range of areas include: Engineering – An IoT device in an engineering plant can alert maintenance personnel to an… Read more »

Schaeffler Group is a global integrated automotive and industrial supplier. Highest quality, outstanding technology, and strong innovative ability represent the basis for the Schaeffler Group’s lasting success. This global company generated sales of approximately 13.3 Billion Euros in 2016. With 22,000 customers and 85,000 employees worldwide, Schaeffler is one of the world’s largest family-owned companies.  It currently has 170 locations in over 50 countries, its  network is comprised of 75 manufacturing locations, research and development facilities, and sales companies. This German-based company has earned a reputation for being a leader in innovation. The Schaeffler Group has invested significant amounts in research and development, with 6,700 employees working on new products and technologies in 17 research and development centers all over the world. Schaeffler owns the rights to approximately 24,000 patents and files more than 2,300 inventions for patent applications every year. Schaeffler is continuously adopting leading-edge strategies to improve their supply chain management process. With the objective of delivering high quality products on-time and at reasonable costs, Schaeffler is committed to innovating new ways to be more flexible and adaptable to any real-time changes. It utilizes a myriad of social media strategies in many areas along the supply chain to improve productivity, design and customer engagement.  

Social media continues to change the way we experience the world, especially the way we shop and interact with brands. What does the future hold for the world of social media shopping? Behold, The Internet of Things. The future of everything is directly tied to the Internet and how fast it connects to people, places, and things. What is the IoT? Well, put simply, it’s the ability of anything to be connected to the Internet such as coffee makers, fridges, a FitBit or products in a store. All you have to do is use your imagination to see what possibilities lay before us. The Internet is completely unfettered now. In the past, you had to be physically wired to a screen in a fixed location to access the net. The advent of mobile technology changed all that, and you can access the internet anywhere, anytime, with an array of devices large and small.