5 Use cases

5.1 Manufacturers of unattended retail components

The unattended retail device which is used to sell a product/service to the user is the combination of the experiences of many different actors, and sometimes also from people coming from outside the unattended retail area.

As in many other areas, the knowledge required to create any device grows over time.

The basic idea of the specification is to be able better insulate the knowledge of each actor providing also simple way to interconnect the components needed.

And the boundaries are basically already the way the manufacturers of vending machines are internally dividing their knowledge: people making good coffee, or reliably delivering pre-packaged product, or making effective method of payments, or finally managing the machine data to best operate the business.

This is not done to make strong separation between company business, but to enable knowledge in each area to be able to grow in independent way; this is why the first people which will take advantage of the specification are the manufacturers.

5.2 Hotel breakfast

Many hotel, B&B, have machine used in morning to prepare and serve hot and cold beverages.

These machines many times do not have payment systems, and selections are free, being paid as an hotel service.

The machines are normally table top, and many of them have a graphical user interface. The user interface is used mainly to select the product to prepare. The machines are typically not connected.

Making these machines modular will enable large ( and small ) hotel chain to handle the use interface independently for the details of the internal operation of the delivery process.

Even if payment is not typically added, the modular approach enables to easily add different payment devices of needed, including the hotel contactless key used by the customer to enter the room. If the machine is also connected, the standardization of the exchanged data ( Audit ) will enable to automatic calculation of customer recipes, if the delivered product must be paid, for example, when product is taken after the morning breakfast time window.

5.3 Closed location vending machines

Many offices have local vending machines, to sell hot, cold beverages, and pre-packaged items: the machine are operated by the office manager, which handles machine filling, product selection.

If the office manager is also the employer, many times, the sold product can be directly accounted to the employee's payroll, or can be part of the company benefit plan.

The machine is bought based on type of product to sell, and the employer can use the machine graphical UI possibly as a company notice board.

Having the machines built by easy integrated component from different sources will enable more freedom in the selection and composition of the final device: the notice-board application must be able to be used on devices providing delivering different product.

Standardized way to connect to the machines, and a known format for the provided data make easy the integration with the company back-end.

5.4 Externally managed location vending machines

Many offices have local vending machines, to sell hot, cold beverages, and pre-packaged items: the machines are operated by an external operating company, which handles machine filling and product selection.

These companies will manage different sets of locations, and have a great variety of product to handle.

Managing a location means also to get information about the device status and operational conditions. The standard audit used today is very limited and mainly provides accounting information. A larger set of data, and a standardized way to get these data make managing widely different device simpler.

Local payment devices are basic elements for these operations: in the past days cash was the only option.

Today cash is important, but a large variety of different other payment types are available. Anything which is not cash is "cashless" but under this definition there is a large variety of different technologies:

standard credit cards,

closed system payment cards,

hotel may require integration in the general customer accounting,

employer can require integration in company payroll,

loyalty cards,

points, and many other.

5.5 Better customer engagement

Any unattended retail finally has as customer interacting with a device able to provide the service or product the customer asks.

These devices can use a graphic display which is normally used only for the selection.

An operator of an unattended retail device is never in physical contact with his customer, but the device display can provide a window: a blackboard for different other type of information, with the final intent the user can come again; but, when the user is in front of the vending device, there is good probability he will buy.

To management of the "user interface" has to be as must as possible independent for the operating details of the product delivery process, and this is the purpose of the standardized interfaces.

The technologies and knowledge used by the user interface designed are evolving and changing very fast. There is need to separate this development from the standard user interface normally embedded in the standard unattended retail devices.

5.6 New machine types

This application will use of a well-known and widely used framework, with an existing large number of devices following the same general environment.

This will enable to buy and integrate components from the market, making the development of new machine types or solving a customer specific requirement faster and more reliably.

Prototyping can be also faster, using standard parts from the market to make a sample before designing the final device.