VENDING
TECHNOLOGY
INTEGRATION
Vending technology
can work together
By Glenn Butler, Contributing Editor, and Emily Refermat, Editor
While vending industry technology choices can be overwhelming,
the interoperability between systems has never been better.
I
n past articles, we have covered
many areas of vending technology. We have discussed vending management systems (VMS's),
debated telemetry and cashless
operations, reported on prekitting,
reviewed pick to light structures
and addressed touchscreen options.
In this article, we'll attempt to lay out
some of the options operators have for
making all these technologies work
together seamlessly, even if they are
from different suppliers.
It is an exciting time in vending.
The existing solutions providers have
been adding more functionality to
their different systems, newly evolved
NAMA vending data interchange
(VDI) standards allow these systems
to function better together and new
and innovative solutions continue to
come to the market. It is no longer the
case that an operator needs to make
an "all or nothing" bet on a single
solutions provider — nearly all these
systems can be made to work together
in several different ways.
Typical technology deployment
The level of technology sophistication seen in vending companies varies from virtually nothing in some
operations to progressive companies
that are fully deployed with cashless/telemetry, advanced VMS's,
backend pick-to-light systems and
are experimenting with other new
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Automatic Merchandiser
Hardware and software such as vending
management, pick-to-light and cashless
systems work together better than ever to
drive up vendor revenues.
technologies to enhance the consumer experience. Because of that,
we need to make certain assumptions. Here is a typical operator's
journey through technology:
• Installs some type of VMS for
accountability
• Moves to item level tracking using
a VMS or telemetry provider
• Executes prekitting on some or
all routes
VendingMarketWatch.com
October 2013
• Adds a pick-to-light or similar
system in the warehouse to make
prekitting as effcient as possible
• Launches telemetry and/or cashless on some or all machines
• Implements a dynamic scheduling system
• Installs screens or other consumer
facing engagement technology
While there are certain dependencies in this type of rollout (for example,
very few operators rollout dynamic
scheduling without telemetry on the
machines), other technologies, like
touchscreens and cashless solutions,