- The startup company is offering its backend support to solution providers and IoT technology users that’s agnostic to sensor technology, application and system software
- The goal is to provide affordable, repeatable Auto ID solutions to companies as a recurring revenue
Businesses as varied as fashion retailers, airports, factories or farms are benefitting from a technology solution that brings a digitized view into what is happening on their sites —auto ID (AIDC). And they use everything from passive RFID tags to sensors that transmit across the IoT spectrum from LoRaWAN, 5G, ultrawide band (UWB), to Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).
As dissimilar as the technologies themselves are—as well as the actual applications they’re used in—one technology start-up is aiming to provide a seamless solution that can be used across the application spectrum with any wireless sensor hardware.
The company, MidmoAI, has already been providing companies with background middleware for the past year that enables all kinds of sensors to communicate the necessary data, to the appropriate software.
Hello World, from Behind the Scenes
The company is marketing itself an AI-driven traceability enabler with middleware that is agnostic to an application or specific technology. The company is introducing itself to the AIDC industry at logistics and supply chain show Manifest 2025, February 9-12. “That is our way to say ‘hello world, we’re coming out, and this is what we do’,” according to David Zingery, Midmo’s CEO.
The company targets shortcomings in other AIDC solutions that are limited by what Zingery called industry politics or excessive product focus. Midmo doesn’t care what the hardware of choice is, “we’ve created an extensible core that gives you the key pieces, enabling a simple and focused path to tailor exactly what you need.”
MotionView can communicate with ERP’s, warehouse management systems (WMS), transportation management software (TMS), as well as MS Teams platforms (such as Power BI, Tableau and DOMO apps). The data is also exportable for Excel worksheets, or displayed in the MotionView’s projects and reporting site.
Eliminating Complexities
Zingery has a background in digital traceability technology and after several decades in the business, he said, he had an interest in eliminating the complexity inherent with AIDC and IoT solutions.
He chose to launch a company that could serve solution providers across the landscape of AIDC implementations. Since they started, their growth has been through Zingery’s contacts, and referrals. “We’ve caught fire organically which has been a lot of fun and exciting — but now it’s time to push on that accelerator.”
Customer Deployments Underway
Some of Midmo’s customers are using the MotionView software in a wide variety of ways. One company is tracking RFID-based transactions—detecting when goods are shipped in and out of warehouses and facilities. The platform is able to link cases of product, including their contents, to their pallet they are stacked on, and to the shipment and truck. The whole system is built using a manifest model.
The solution can be leveraged for reverse logistics scenarios, returns and shrink detection, Zingery said, and is built to expand. “It’s an extensible traceability foundation that allows them to grow as they go and implement at varying levels across their trading network,” he said.
And while this data capture can be accomplished with a combination of fixed and mobile RFID today, Zingery predicts they could include wearables for value-added activities, avoiding change management impacts.
Cold Chain Food Traceability
Other companies are using the MotionView software to accomplish food traceability in their cold supply chain. In the long run, the technology is intended to help companies meet the Food and Drug Administration (FDA’s) FSMA 204 requirements. That legislation will require a full digital history of a product for improved food safety.
In this use case, “we’re doing some layering of technologies ranging from temperature sensors that include NFC and location attributes. There is some trailer tracking as well as RFID labeling on some reusables,” Zingery said.
Capturing that data means selecting partners and technologies. To meet this need, MotionView is designed to work with any of those choices for Critical Tracking Events (CTE’s), Key Data Elements (KDE’s) and mandate compliance.
Real-time Data for Agriculture, Manufacturing
Real-time locating systems (RTLS) are leveraging the MotionView solution to help growers, distributors and cold storage facilities track environmental conditions in real time.
MotionWork can leverage an uploaded floor plan of the user’s facility to monitor the items of interest, their conditional status, and enable those users to drill down into the journey history. Currently this feature works with technologies that include overhead RFID readers, BLE, UWB and LoRaWAN.
For manufacturers, work in progress (WIP) efforts consist of Midmo’s DepthVision solution for part and component replenishment. This consists of machine learning algorithms in MotionView’s cloud, as well as vision cameras adjacent to production lines as to constantly be evaluating fill percentages and volume analysis.
Thresholds can be set and controlled (through an enterprise device management feature) from within MotionView, with associated analytics for consumption metrics and reporting.
Future Proofing
“It’s a future-proofed solution because MotionView enables ongoing connectivity to the edge, enhances it with AI, and enables item-level visibility and control for ongoing modernization and optimization,” Zingery explained. Future iterations for work in progress will include layering RFID on reusable containers and also an application of its DepthVision solution in other parts of the facility to track waste, raw materials, or other supplies and activities.
Midmo has a partner-oriented focus, so that solution providers can white label its platform rather than having to build their own. “And to keep a low price point— we want to be low enough to where our partners are able to mark it up and be competitive in the market,” said Zingery.
The goal is to create a recurring revenue model shared with Midmo.
Zingery argued that other market platforms still charge customization fees because they’re connected only to a select ‘preferred’ devices and aren’t tooled in a way to manage and maintain that connectivity.
“The market model is so antiquated, which is why we’ve set out to fix it,” he said.