Retail IoT ("RIoT")

A streamlined approach to inventory management & supplier order fulfillment, via decentralized IoT blockchains

Comment

Inspiration

Retailers are still struggling with accurate in-store inventory and out-of-stock events. This has escalated with omni-channel fulfillment that enables online order pick up in store. Consumers show up in store to pickup an online order only to find the item is no longer in stock. Retailers are looking to track inventory in realtime and have a quick efficient replenishment bartering processes with suppliers.

The few IoT replenishment services that have risen in the last couple of years charge for every transaction, struggle with centralized scalability, security, and trustful data separation.

What it does

RIoT implements a decentralized IoT blockchain network; a bartering consortium blockchain. It tags all retail inventory in retail stores and tracks purchasing in realtime with RFID. At purchase it sends an inventory update event into the blockchain, the smart contracts then compares SKU level inventory to min-max values. If a SKU falls below min inventory the supplier receives an event to replenish and ship product. Upon advanced shipping notice (ASN) and product receipt/scanning at the store the contract is fulfilled and paid.

How we built it

Technologies used : Ethereum on Azure, solidity, node-js, node-red, and vi on Unbuntu. WE implemented a single contract for the VMI process, including ASNs and retailer receipt of product.

Challenges we ran into

Should the ASN and receipt of goods process be modeled with a second contract ?

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We did not run out of gas !!!!

What we learned

As we brainstormed, debated, screamed and yelled at each other today on hackathon ideas, we realized that it is important for leverage blockchains for the right reasons, such as escrow-based bartering, open trustless ubiquitous bartering network, immutable transaction ledger, and decentralized P2P transactions. Otherwise you are often better off with other enterprise database solutions, e.g. Hadoop, etc.

What's next for RIoT - Retail IoT

  1. Stream blockchain transactions into Spark/Hadoop for "blockchain analytics" and "blockchain CEP", including machine learning models and algorithms for "predictive blockchain analytics".
  2. Add dunnage tracking, with escrow-based dunnage contracts, as suppliers lose millions of dollars each ear in lost dunnage.
  3. Add ability for suppliers to bid for same SKUs, which would align well with brand-agnostic retailers like Costo & Sam's Club.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates