Inspiration
We are witnessing a substantial increase in the number of coronavirus infected people around the world, especially in Germany.
In these difficult times it is important to keep society going functioning and ensure that everyone has access to healthy and nutritious food and supplies. Some supermarkets introduced distancing measures at checkouts to reduce infection risk to the supermarket employees as well as other food delivery services.
At the same time, in the midst of a presumptive shortage of certain products (e.g. toilet paper) due to the coronavirus, manufacturers and supermarkets are desperately fighting to fulfill the pandemic-driven demand. It is resulting in not only increased workload for the remaining employees in the supermarkets and but also causing huge logistic problems.
We are facing this issue as well, and we want to introduce a prepacked shopping system to remove any impediments and minimize risk exposures to the virus, both for customers and our market employees.
What it does
We build an all-in-one  product information management solution with live connection to supermarket's ERP-system. Customers can select products using mobile device comfortably at home. The availability of items will be checked in real time. Additionally, the customer picks a free time slot to pick up the products.
For supermarkets:
- Avoidance of immediate shortage of high-demand products during crisis
- Potential new income stream by charging a small pick-up preparation fee every time
For customers:
- No time wasted on looking for items in supermarkets (shopping list is ready to pick up when customer arrives)
- Minimized queuing due to scheduled pick-up times
- No missed items on the shopping list
- Hygiene & CSR (that's what customers pay extra for)
- Minimized physical contact with shelf items
How we built it
We developed the front-end and back-end in JavaScript. All data is stored in a MySQL database. We deployed all components on the Google Cloud Platform which enables high scaleability.
Challenges we ran into
A big challenge was to connect the different parts of the application.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Leverage mature technologies, we built a Working prototype in just 2 days.
What I learned
Setting up a database structure.
Working with the Google Cloud Platform.
What's next for 01_lebensmittel-matching_PrepackedShopping
To build a usable solution we have to add login functionalities for the costumers and the supermarkets. For the supermarkets we need a display for the incoming orders.
The time-scheduling functionality of the front-end has to be connected to the back-end.
The back-end needs some improvements in regards to security.
Win the competition and test it in a real scenario and be of help to the society.
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