Shoppers are seeing more and more empty shelves, as stores around the world struggle to keep products stocked. The situation is the result of supply-chain issues caused in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. The product-unavailability rate increased from 5 percent to 15 percent during the past three years, according to the Consumer Brands Association.
To make it easier for stores to track inventory, startup Wisy developed an AI platform that uses image recognition to detect which products are out of stock or running low, as well as those that are available but haven’t yet been put on display.
“We are not only solving a customer-experience problem but also a sustainability problem,” says IEEE Senior Member Min Chen, Wisy cofounder and CEO. “All those products that are not sold because they were not displayed get thrown away. WisyAI enables store employees to quickly get information about the stock, reduce losses, and sell [products] more effectively.”