Twelve Mile Circle took an equally futile stab at it, searching for places literally called “Nowhere.” A bazillion different people asserted that their measurement of nowhere was best despite relying on wild assertions or idiomatic usage. Unfortunately the great body of Internet knowledge didn’t help much. First one must discover the exact placement of nowhere and then travel to the middle of it to verify the claim. It was much more difficult to find the middle of nowhere. Never mind that there were plenty of other claimants, I found the one true center naturally because the Intertubes confirmed it and of course that made it unquestionably true. By apply intuitive, drag-and-drop AI solutions for demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and food traceability, food manufacturers will be in a better position to weather supply chain disruptions when the next shock to the global food system occurs.I once searched for and found the Center of the Universe. Thanks to No-Code, Artificial Intelligence is now accessible to every food manufacturer who wishes to harness a new era of machine intelligence. There is no better time to build the intelligent, resilient supply chains of tomorrow. Investing in AI automation is crucial for future competitiveness, and the cost of not automating is simply too high in today’s landscape. But, in order to make effective use of this data, manufacturers will need to redesign their supply-chain and digital processes. At no other time in history have food manufacturers had so much digital information at their fingertips. Prices for raw ingredients are skyrocketing and orders arrive late or not at all.īut unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. Nowhere is this more evident than in today’s broken supply chains. The pandemic has led to increased volatility in food manufacturing. You can see our FDA submission video below. This also makes it easy to run trace audits when a recall has occurred. Our solution was unique in its ability to combine all data sources and processing steps for a food manufacturer, while simultaneously visually documenting the logic used in the form of flowcharts that anyone can understand. We chose to build our solution in KNIME because of its extensive capabilities, but also because it is open-source (i.e. My company, Haystack Data Solutions, recently participated in The FDA New Era of Smarter Food Safety Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge to design a low-cost traceability solution for food manufacturers. This helps reduce friction in the supply chain and enhances a food manufacturer’s agility when disruptions, such as food recalls, occur. In the case of foodborne illnesses or contamination, the linkages between food producers, processors, and distributors are maintained to enable faster removal of contaminated food. Traceability systems are crucial for the health and safety of the food supply. Traceability enables food manufacturers to track the movement of products and ingredients through each step of the supply chain and manufacturing process. The third AI solution that food manufacturers can use to optimize their supply chains is AI for traceability optimization. Many are being forced to meet higher ingredient costs by reformulating their products with alternative ingredients.ĭemand Forecasting AI for food are designed to learn from past historical product performance in order to predict future demand.ĪI for demand forecasting is therefore the perfect strategic analytics tool food manufacturers can use to optimally allocate scarce resources and anticipate purchasing efforts with enough lead time to soften potential blows from slow supply chains. W ith prices for production staples like flour and eggs skyrocketing 20% – 70% from a year ago, food manufacturers such as industrial bakers have little wiggle room when sourcing raw materials. It is therefore the key driver for all supply-chain related decisions. The first AI solution that food manufacturers can use to optimize their supply chains is AI for demand forecasting.ĭemand forecasting is the starting point for most supply-chain processes in food manufacturing, like raw material planning, procurement, inbound logistics, and production planning.

Haystack middle of nowhere