Databricks Case Studies Creating a Winning Recipe for a Hyperefficient Supply Chain: A Case Study on Barilla

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	Creating a Winning Recipe for a Hyperefficient Supply Chain: A Case Study on Barilla Databricks

Creating a Winning Recipe for a Hyperefficient Supply Chain: A Case Study on Barilla

Databricks

Technology Category	Functional Applications - Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) Functional Applications - Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)
Applicable Industries	Consumer Goods Retail
Applicable Functions	Logistics & Transportation Maintenance
Use Cases	Predictive Maintenance Supply Chain Visibility
Services	System Integration Testing & Certification
Challenge	Barilla, the world's largest pasta producer, faced significant challenges due to unpredictable crop yields and rising raw material costs caused by climate change. These disruptions led to product shortages and quality issues, necessitating a more sustainable and resilient supply chain strategy. However, Barilla's legacy on-premises data warehouse was unable to scale their operations effectively, creating silos that hindered their ability to navigate these external threats. The company's supply chain and logistics needed to maintain high-quality standards while maximizing revenue in a low-margin business. As Barilla's distribution expanded to meet growing global demand, it became clear that they needed to modernize their data to enable analytics at scale. With over 1TB of data ingested daily, data analysts struggled to integrate and analyze the necessary data, leading to delays and inefficiencies. Additionally, Barilla's large European footprint required processing sensitive consumer data for GDPR compliance, necessitating a robust data governance plan. Read More
About Customer	Barilla is the largest pasta producer in the world, with over 300 different food products made in more than 90 factories and distributed across over 100 countries. The company has a diverse ecosystem of production sites, raw material vendors, distribution centers, and thousands of retailers serving markets from Asia to Europe and into the Americas. Barilla has long been at the forefront of technology innovations in an effort to deliver the best food products to the masses. However, as their distribution expanded to support the growing demand for their products worldwide, it became clear they needed to modernize their data to allow analytics at scale. Read More
Solution	Barilla adopted Databricks Lakehouse as their data strategy, upgrading their monolithic, mainframe-based infrastructure to Azure Databricks and Power BI for departmental reporting and dashboarding. This transition propelled Barilla's data-driven transition, with 90% of their business now running on Databricks Lakehouse. Barilla uses Databricks for their entire ML practice, delivering intelligence that guides manufacturing, improves operations, and drives their environmental sustainability efforts. With manufacturing cost deployment models, staff can extract and allocate industrial costs and quantify plant losses. They can also better predict machine failure and schedule maintenance windows proactively. To streamline supply chain management, Barilla implemented a traceability system using Databricks. By analyzing supplier performance through BI dashboards, they can assess supplier risk. Barilla's marketing teams use Databricks Lakehouse to understand customer behavior and preferences, identify new markets, and segment customers to drive more revenue opportunities. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)

Functional Applications - Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)

Applicable Industries

Consumer Goods

Retail

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation

Maintenance

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance

Supply Chain Visibility

Services

System Integration

Testing & Certification

Challenge

Barilla, the world's largest pasta producer, faced significant challenges due to unpredictable crop yields and rising raw material costs caused by climate change. These disruptions led to product shortages and quality issues, necessitating a more sustainable and resilient supply chain strategy. However, Barilla's legacy on-premises data warehouse was unable to scale their operations effectively, creating silos that hindered their ability to navigate these external threats. The company's supply chain and logistics needed to maintain high-quality standards while maximizing revenue in a low-margin business. As Barilla's distribution expanded to meet growing global demand, it became clear that they needed to modernize their data to enable analytics at scale. With over 1TB of data ingested daily, data analysts struggled to integrate and analyze the necessary data, leading to delays and inefficiencies. Additionally, Barilla's large European footprint required processing sensitive consumer data for GDPR compliance, necessitating a robust data governance plan.

About Customer

Barilla is the largest pasta producer in the world, with over 300 different food products made in more than 90 factories and distributed across over 100 countries. The company has a diverse ecosystem of production sites, raw material vendors, distribution centers, and thousands of retailers serving markets from Asia to Europe and into the Americas. Barilla has long been at the forefront of technology innovations in an effort to deliver the best food products to the masses. However, as their distribution expanded to support the growing demand for their products worldwide, it became clear they needed to modernize their data to allow analytics at scale.

Solution

Barilla adopted Databricks Lakehouse as their data strategy, upgrading their monolithic, mainframe-based infrastructure to Azure Databricks and Power BI for departmental reporting and dashboarding. This transition propelled Barilla's data-driven transition, with 90% of their business now running on Databricks Lakehouse. Barilla uses Databricks for their entire ML practice, delivering intelligence that guides manufacturing, improves operations, and drives their environmental sustainability efforts. With manufacturing cost deployment models, staff can extract and allocate industrial costs and quantify plant losses. They can also better predict machine failure and schedule maintenance windows proactively. To streamline supply chain management, Barilla implemented a traceability system using Databricks. By analyzing supplier performance through BI dashboards, they can assess supplier risk. Barilla's marketing teams use Databricks Lakehouse to understand customer behavior and preferences, identify new markets, and segment customers to drive more revenue opportunities.

Impact #1	After transitioning to the Databricks Lakehouse Platform, Barilla has seen a dramatic shift to data-informed decisions and an immediate improvement in operational efficiency. The company uses Databricks Lakehouse end-to-end, supporting the decision-making of over 2,000 data users across the company and delivering business continuity like never before. Looking ahead, Barilla plans to continue innovations across their organization using data, analytics, and AI. They plan to extract insights from unstructured data, such as customer reviews and social media posts, to segment customers and personalize marketing efforts. Manufacturing is exploring anomaly detection and root cause analysis to identify and address unusual patterns and behaviors in manufacturing processes. Additionally, sales plans to use data insights to forecast demand and adjust production accordingly. With a modern data lakehouse platform in place, Barilla is excited about their business and delivering the highest quality products to their growing market.

Impact #1

After transitioning to the Databricks Lakehouse Platform, Barilla has seen a dramatic shift to data-informed decisions and an immediate improvement in operational efficiency. The company uses Databricks Lakehouse end-to-end, supporting the decision-making of over 2,000 data users across the company and delivering business continuity like never before. Looking ahead, Barilla plans to continue innovations across their organization using data, analytics, and AI. They plan to extract insights from unstructured data, such as customer reviews and social media posts, to segment customers and personalize marketing efforts. Manufacturing is exploring anomaly detection and root cause analysis to identify and address unusual patterns and behaviors in manufacturing processes. Additionally, sales plans to use data insights to forecast demand and adjust production accordingly. With a modern data lakehouse platform in place, Barilla is excited about their business and delivering the highest quality products to their growing market.

Benefit #1	Over 1TB of data is ingested daily for decision-making
Benefit #2	90% of Barilla's business now runs on Databricks Lakehouse
Benefit #3	Over 2,000 data users across the company are supported by Databricks Lakehouse

Benefit #1

Over 1TB of data is ingested daily for decision-making

Benefit #2

90% of Barilla's business now runs on Databricks Lakehouse

Benefit #3

Over 2,000 data users across the company are supported by Databricks Lakehouse

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Overview

Creating a Winning Recipe for a Hyperefficient Supply Chain: A Case Study on Barilla

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit