Svenska Retursystem or SRS, is a company that provides a sustainable way of handling food crates and pallets for the Swedish food industry. The largest FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies in Sweden, including ICA, COOP, Bergendahl, and Axfood, own SRS.
The idea behind SRS’s mission was that the industry should be utilising reusable and durable crates and pallets for food distribution. This circular and environmentally conscious system would help organise the supply chain of food and beverage. This practice would eliminate waste and employ a list of practices that would make it a part of the efforts to reduce the impact on climate.
Food consumption is responsible for 30 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. According to data available on the SRS website, in 2022 the industry saved more than 36,400 tons of carbon dioxide by using their crates and pallets.
SRS’s Challenge
To sustain this kind of business model, it was crucial to have data on the whereabouts of the crates and pallets. This meant that SRS had to know their physical location, movement habits, and condition, as well as have a system in place to track their behaviour. This would mean having full control and digitalising the logistics, which until that point had been based on manual processes.
They needed a long-term tech partner that could help them digitalise the supply chain process in an agile and flexible way. This would include support and maintenance services to make sure the system is working properly after it goes live.
- Digitalise logistics
- Minimise transport frequency
- Decrease operational costs
- Decrease carbon emissions
A Trusted Tech-Partner
The partnership between Nion and SRS was established in 2016 and our consultants have been making a valuable impact on their team since then. The average team size is between 7 and 10 consultants. Some of the expertise that we have provided were an Agile Team Lead, Solution Architect, Back- and Frontend Developers, UI/UX Designers, QA Engineers, DevOps Engineers, Support Engineers, and Data Scientists. Each new consultant that joins the team is properly onboarded so that they are immediately ready to join the project.
Nion assembled an agile development team that helped develop a smart platform. The DevOps work involved leveraging cutting-edge tools and technologies, to enable efficient software delivery and infrastructure management. This platform is a responsive web application, built with a mobile-first approach. The end user of this application can track the crates and pallets and be aware of their condition and behaviours. They can also order crates and pallets, find information about prices on various offers, easily create and approve transactions, etc.
This project has required ongoing support and maintenance, with a 2nd and 3rd line service desk support, adhering to ITIL best practices for incident and problem management services. With this, we have ensured continuous operation and improvement of the system.
Success Factors
One of the key factors that made our work with SRS a success story is the adopted team-centric approach. This meant that client company goals are shared by the entire team. For this to happen, a close collaboration on all levels needed to be established. This included our Nion consultants, as well. For the entire duration of the project, there’s been a shared mindset, between SRS and Nion when it came to succeeding together. Together we make a great team that sees the big picture and doesn’t simply complete tasks by following instructions.
To Conclude
The cooperation between SRS and Nion is strategic and long-term. During our time together, Nion has played a proactive role in the innovation processes at SRS. For example, Nion has led an inspirational seminar in machine learning, which has led to optimising customer order prediction.
Photo by Alberto Rodríguez on Unsplash