{"id":264538,"date":"2026-06-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/startup-helps-retailers-track-their-products-in-real-time-mit-news\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T00:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T04:20:21","slug":"startup-helps-retailers-track-their-products-in-real-time-mit-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/startup-helps-retailers-track-their-products-in-real-time-mit-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Startup helps retailers track their products in real-time | MIT News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2026\/cartesian-helps-retailers-track-their-products-in-real-time-0605\">Startup helps retailers track their products in real-time | MIT News<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2026\/cartesian-helps-retailers-track-their-products-in-real-time-0605\">https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2026\/cartesian-helps-retailers-track-their-products-in-real-time-0605<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-05 00:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"news.mit.edu\">news.mit.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<p>When you picture a worker at a retail store, you probably think of someone at a cash register or helping a customer. But employees also spend a lot of their time combing through stockrooms and shop floors, fulfilling requests or online orders and generally trying to keep track of all their inventory.<\/p>\n<p>Keeping track of inventory takes so much time, in part, because retailers don\u2019t always know where everything is located. That\u2019s why when you ask a store associate to check if they have a shirt in your size, it may take them 20 minutes to get back to you.<\/p>\n<p>Cartesian is helping retailers keep track of inventory with a technology invented at MIT. The system uses wireless signals from radio frequency identification (RFID) tags attached to items to find their precise location in a store, from the stockroom to the shop floor.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Cartesian did a study with a retailer and found its platform delivered meaningful annual savings at the store level by streamlining inventory tracking, optimizing workflows, and improving customer experiences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe big problem we\u2019re solving is that about 50 percent of working hours in retail stores go to managing inventory,\u201d says co-founder Fadel Adib SM \u201913, PhD \u201917, an associate professor at MIT. \u201cThat is roughly a $15 billion problem in the U.S. alone. We use algorithms to decipher indoor locations using wireless signals. The core technology enables a new level of indoor localization.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cartesian is already deployed in more than 700 stores across 15 countries and is working with one of the world\u2019s largest fashion groups, Inditex, which is the parent company to brands like ZARA, Pull&#038;Bear, and Oysho.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond retailers and warehouses, Cartesian\u2019s platform could also improve indoor location tracking for manufacturers, logistics operators, and robotics companies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe broad vision for what we are doing is spatial AI,\u201d says Adib. \u201cToday, AI does extremely well in the digital world. Now it has to&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2026\/cartesian-helps-retailers-track-their-products-in-real-time-0605\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Startup helps retailers track their products in real-time | MIT News https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2026\/cartesian-helps-retailers-track-their-products-in-real-time-0605 Publish Date: 2026-06-05&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":264539,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/news.mit.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/202606\/MIT_Cartesian-Systems-01-press.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264538"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264540,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264538\/revisions\/264540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}