C3 IoT > Case Studies > Enterprise AI for Demand Forecasting and Production Scheduling in Global Agribusiness

Enterprise AI for Demand Forecasting and Production Scheduling in Global Agribusiness

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
Functional Applications - Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)

Applicable Industries

Education
Food & Beverage

Applicable Functions

Procurement
Warehouse & Inventory Management

Use Cases

Additive Manufacturing
Demand Planning & Forecasting

Services

Data Science Services
System Integration

The Customer

Not disclosed

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About The Customer

The customer is a global agribusiness and food manufacturer with over $100 billion in annual revenue in 2020. The company operates approximately 1400 manufacturing and distribution sites worldwide and employs over 150,000 people. It operates in over 120 countries and produces over 80 million pounds of food products per year across 90+ product codes and various raw materials. The company's only customer is a global retailer, and it faces significant challenges in demand forecasting and production scheduling due to the highly variable demand of this customer.

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The Challenge

A global agribusiness and food manufacturer, producing over 80 million pounds of food products per year across eight production lines, faced significant challenges in demand forecasting and production scheduling. The company's only customer, a global retailer, exhibited highly variable demand, leading to discrepancies with the manufacturer's weekly demand forecast. Traditional demand forecasting solutions, based on statistical algorithms, were unable to cope with the short lead times and daily sales orders due to the short shelf life of food products. This resulted in unfulfilled customer orders. Additional rule-based solutions procured to improve production scheduling also failed to optimize schedules and significantly improve manufacturing operations.

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The Solution

To address these challenges, the company decided to implement the C3 AI Demand Forecasting and C3 AI Production Schedule Optimization applications. The C3 AI team began by ingesting, cleansing, and unifying 18 different data sources, including historical demand forecasts, order history data, production history, manufacturing specifications, and historical inventory levels. This unified data image enabled the company to train and configure the AI applications. The C3 AI Production Schedule Optimization was configured to automatically generate schedules based on the latest available data, reducing the time to generate schedules by 96%. The user interface across both applications was configured to enable users to view critical manufacturing KPIs, identify KPIs at risk, evaluate and approve AI-recommendations, and develop multiple scenarios by tuning inputs into the scheduling algorithm.

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Operational Impact

The implementation of the C3 AI Demand Forecasting and C3 AI Production Schedule Optimization applications resulted in significant operational improvements for the company. The unified data image enabled the company to train and configure the AI applications effectively, leading to more accurate demand forecasts and optimized production schedules. The user interface was configured to enable users to view critical manufacturing KPIs, identify KPIs at risk, evaluate and approve AI-recommendations, and develop multiple scenarios by tuning inputs into the scheduling algorithm. This has resulted in a more efficient and effective manufacturing operation, with significant improvements in demand forecasting and production scheduling.

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Quantitative Benefit

Unified 72M rows of data for 88 product codes with 44 raw materials in 8 production lines
Configured the proprietary C3 AI neural network to generate daily demand forecasts 21-days into the future with a 8% uplift in accuracy
$30M in additional gross margin identified from increased order fill rate

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