Case Study: Large Retail Chain Company achieves $40M cost savings and cuts food waste with Cognizant IoT Refrigeration Solution

Keeping Food Fresh and Data Even Fresher

Cognizant partnered with a large retail chain facing nearly $2 billion a year in food loss, about $300 million of which was caused by failures in legacy refrigeration systems. Alarms from the outdated controllers took five to six hours to reach operations, there was no early-warning mechanism, and vendors no longer supported the controllers or allowed parameter changes—creating a major operational and financial risk.

Cognizant implemented an IoT solution that installed devices to poll prioritized sensor data from controllers and a platform to log, monitor and predict alarms and failures across U.S. stores. The system also aggregates energy, fleet and meter data to improve efficiency and supply-chain planning. Results include a projected $40M in cost savings, reduction of automated work-order lead time from 36 hours to 4, and automation of 87% of field service work orders.