Schwan’s Home Delivery, the largest direct-to-home food delivery provider in the USA, has selected SmartSense by Digi monitoring to protect critical inventory across its delivery fleet and depot locations.

SmartSense sensors and software will collect and analyse more than 23 million monthly data points from 3000 delivery trucks and 300 depot locations in a multiyear deal.

The aim is to ensure consistent food temperatures and quality throughout its warehousing and shipping processes.

Schwan’s Home Delivery places a high emphasis on food safety by meeting and exceeding USDA regulations. To meet its standards, the company requires scalable technology.

Prior to SmartSense, the Schwan’s team relied upon its employees to monitor and record temperature conditions manually in trucks and facilities, including facility visits after hours and on weekends. This lack of real-time monitoring and alerts meant inventory could become a total loss if a freezer failed or malfunctioned.

Additionally, Schwan’s detected that some equipment did not accurately measure or display temperature via built-in systems, potentially putting product at risk. Based on projections, savings from increased product quality, reduced manual processes and elimination of lost product stemming from these challenges will entirely fund its investment in SmartSense technology.

“Our mission is providing outstanding food to our customers, and SmartSense by Digi will improve our ability to do that at essentially zero net cost,” said Larry Gaskin, director of national warehouse operations at Schwan’s Home Delivery. “On top of those customer and bottom-line benefits, our new automated monitoring capabilities will help us deliver on an important core value by giving our employees true work-life balance by eliminating manual weekend temperature checks. All in all, we’re gaining incredible operational efficiencies that bring value to our customers, employees and Schwan’s Home Delivery as an organisation.”

Each truck will be outfitted with two SmartSense sensors to protect product while they are precooling in the yard overnight. While on the delivery route, temperatures will be logged and then automatically uploaded to the SmartSense dashboard upon return to the yard. Finally, all on-site freezers at Schwan’s 300 depots will be equipped with the same continuous monitoring to ensure product is safe and of the highest quality.

SmartSense will collect, analyse and report on more than 23 million monthly data points while monitoring Schwan’s mobile and fixed assets.

Schwan’s use of SmartSense to analyse and optimise refrigeration equipment continuously enables establishment of more accurate baselines for refrigeration performance and implementation of more accurate resource planning.

“Schwan’s Home Delivery is a powerful and respectable brand and has achieved unparalleled success in direct-to-home food service delivery,” said Kevin Riley, president of SmartSense by Digi. “They required a solution that could provide the scalability and enterprise visibility needed to protect its operations. We are proud to have won their trust.”

Digi International is a provider of business and mission-critical IoT connectivity products. It helps its customers create connected products to deploy, monitor and manage critical communications infrastructures and compliance standards in demanding environments with security, reliability and performance. Founded in 1985, it has helped connect over 100 million things.