Supply Chain Management Archives • Page 2 of 11 • SAP.iO

SAP.iO In Supply Chain Management, New York

Inspectorio Introduces World’s First Generative AI-Driven Supply Chain Management SaaS Product

Inspectorio, the leading AI-powered SaaS solution for supply chain organizations, continues to break barriers in the supply chain industry with today’s introduction of the Inspectorio CAPA recommender, the world’s first ChatGPT-driven generative AI tool to assist brands, retailers, suppliers, factories, and others with supply chain management.

“As a pioneer in the supply chain field, Inspectorio is leading the way into a new era of generative AI, where physical and digital worlds converge. The industry-first launch of the CAPA recommender furthers our mission to streamline processes, accelerate supply chain performance, inspire innovation and push technological boundaries, enabling our clients to be more efficient and collaborative across their ecosystem,” said Carlos Moncayo, CEO of Inspectorio.

The AI-powered CAPA recommender tool unlocks unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness improvements by addressing critical pain points in the quality control process, specifically related to the research, validation and development of corrective action plans.

Leveraging data from across its supplier ecosystem, the CAPA recommender marries collaborative intelligence with generative AI to deliver proven guidance on corrective and preventive action, reducing the need for time-consuming manual investigations. Its benefits include:

Detecting patterns and trends from historical data and the Inspectorio ecosystem
Identifying the root causes of defects or non-conformities in products
Improving the speed and quality of proposed corrective actions and preventive action plans
Providing personalized automated recommendations, reducing the time and cost of manual investigations
Enabling greater transparency, trust and reputation management among all partners

Brands, retailers, suppliers, and factories will experience the enhanced supply chain performance, streamlined operations, and accelerated decision-making that is ultimately required to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving market.

Andonix Introduces Andi, the AI-Powered Manufacturing Chatbot Revolutionizing Factories

Andonix proudly introduces Andi, the AI-powered manufacturing chatbot designed to bring AI augmentation to factory workers. Andi is an advanced natural language processing solution driven by AI technology, enabling factory workers to engage in human-like conversations and request expert help and support from the chatbot. Andi can assist with tasks such as automatically monitoring machine and process performance, solving problems, and generating action plans, checklists, and work instructions.

Andi can also learn company-specific information like machine operation and troubleshooting manuals, quality systems, HR manuals, and more, providing instant support for specific questions like how to fix particular machine failure codes, identifying the top three problems causing the most downtime in a machine, determining the FTQ for the last hour, or even clarifying company vacation policies. Andi offers unprecedented efficiency, productivity, and real-time guidance for factory teams, streamlining operations and continuously delivering data-driven insights to improve manufacturing outcomes.

Execution Performance Enhanced

Factory worker teams, and managers face numerous challenges, such as monitoring machine performance, addressing equipment downtime, maintaining product quality, ensuring worker safety, and managing resources effectively. These tasks often require real-time decision-making, data analysis, and communication with the workforce, placing significant demands on managers’ time and expertise.

Additionally, managers often need more resources, such as time, personnel, and budget, making it difficult to effectively address all performance monitoring and problem-solving needs. Constant firefighting, crisis management, and managing multiple stakeholders simultaneously leave teams with no time to spare.

Andonix customers have frequently voiced concerns about inefficient communication. Following trending issues and prioritizing urgent matters versus important ones can be extremely challenging using WhatsApp, Email, SMS, phone calls, etc. Communication gaps between different departments, teams, and personnel can hinder the timely exchange of information, slowing down problem detection and resolution.

This is why Andonix created Andi. With Andi, customers can access a manufacturing expert on demand when needed, without delays or constraints; Andi can send timely automatic notifications when a problem or anomaly is detected when monitoring a machine or process. Whether on WhatsApp, Web, iOS, or Android, factory teams can instantly consume performance metrics and access expert help to make informed decisions to solve problems in a way that was impossible just a few months ago.

Revuze Recognized as Minicorn in Tracxn Emerging Startup Rewards

Tracxn recognizes Revuze as a Minicorn, a high-growth early-stage venture preparing for accelerated growth with the potential to become a Unicorn – a startup valued at over $1 billion. This recognition showcases Revuze as one of the leading tech startups of Brands Tech.

The Tracxn Emerging Startup Rewards is an initiative to publicly recognize the top global companies across sectors. Besides the well-known Unicorns, Tracxn also identifies Minicorns as well as Soonicorns, companies that can soon be Unicorns.

“[Revuze is] the first company to make deep market insights available to any business user from the comfort of their desk at an affordable price. No more standing in line for data or waiting on research to come back. Now any business role can make the best possible decisions”

Revuze’s unique product positions it and its clients for great profitability. Tracxn’s startup ratings are based on a detailed analysis by Tracxn’s internal sector specialist teams coupled with a combination of multiple publicly available signals such as market size, investment by marquee investors, execution excellence, and future growth prospects.

Stephanie Benedetto Leads the Charge on Deadstock

Stephanie Benedetto is leading the industry in circular fashion as the co-founder of Queen of Raw, an award-winning software that takes action on excess inventory, measures, and reports, and turns pollution into profit. This week, Benedetto joins a CFDA webinar on designing with deadstock to share her insights on the current landscape of this market and the opportunities and benefits of working with excess fabric.

What prompted you to start your business, Queen of Raw?

I had a factory and saw firsthand the massive amount of waste and breaks in complex supply chains. There are valuable resources sitting in warehouses collecting dust or being burned or sent for combustion. And organizations all over the world are looking for access to these materials. I realized this is just a supply-demand mismatch and we could use technology to bridge the gap, across industries and around the world. I left my job as a Wall Street attorney to tackle the problem head on and to build a solution for people, planet, and profit!

Can all brands (big or small) begin using deadstock as part of their design practices?

There is no company too big or too small to take advantage of integrating rescued fabrics into their designs – or to sell excess inventory that is no longer needed. We have large enterprise clients with millions of meters of high-quality materials which match well with other large brands looking to create entire deadstock collections. And we have smaller designers looking to create limited edition deadstock pieces but can’t commit to large, expensive orders.

Leveraging our proprietary software, Materia MX, they can get access to what they need, when they need it and drive the project from start to finish!

Realizing that all change is good change, we also offer a more basic membership in our software and network for smaller businesses who are looking to sell or purchase excess inventory but don’t need comprehensive ESG reporting or global supply chain integrations and inventory management.

SAP.iO In San Francisco, Supply Chain Management

Verusen Launches AI-Powered Supplier App

Verusen announced the launch of its AI-powered “Trusted Supply” application, enabling industrial distributors, integrators and suppliers to maximize visibility into customer demand to grow revenue and improve network resiliency for their customers.

Data for the materials used throughout industrial supply chains is dirty, incomplete and inconsistent as it passes through end-user and supplier systems. The traditional solution has always been data cleansing for multiple siloed applications and manual processes that cost all parties too much time, money, and risk.

Verusen’s Trusted Supply is an application purpose-built for suppliers featuring natural language AI models to enable suppliers to respond more effectively to customer needs, regardless of system or data quality. Today, the offering is designed to streamline the RFx process, exponentially improving the match rate for materials requested by customers and prospects, enabling suppliers to respond in hours instead of weeks.

Future enhancements to Trusted Supply focus on improving efficiency and enhancing revenue generation with key areas of development including:

Real-time exchange of demand signals with customers
Tail spend optimization and contract compliance
Collaborative planning capabilities between suppliers and their buyers

“Entering our third year in market supporting dozens of F500 manufacturers and generating hundreds of millions in savings opportunities for them, we recognized that the next evolution of supply optimization is to simplify buyer-supplier collaboration to build resilient supply networks,” said Paul J. Noble, Verusen founder and chief strategy officer. “Speed and scale wins. I’m proud that today, Trusted Supply will help remove the friction from the RFx process and that in the future, Trusted Supply will enable real-time collaboration between suppliers and their customers, eliminating data dependent manual processes to make it easier to buy, easier to sell and reduce risk across the supply chain.”

Milkman Technologies is a WINNER in the SAP Innovation Awards 2023

Milkman Technologies has been named a winner of the 2023 SAP Innovation Awards award in the Partner Paragon Category for their flexible, efficient and green last mile home delivery operations platform. The SAP Innovation Awards celebrate the achievements of future-minded companies and individuals that have harnessed the power of the latest SAP products and cloud technologies to create positive economic, environmental, and social impact so that the world runs better, and people’s lives are improved.

Ivaldi Launches ChatGPT Digital Assistant for Troubleshooting & On-Demand Ordering

Ivaldi Group unveils a ChatGPT-enabled troubleshooting and on-demand ordering solution for maintenance teams. This AI-driven digital assistant simplifies maintenance operations, enabling faster access to crucial spare parts.

Ivaldi’s custom ChatGPT integration allows secure equipment data and maintenance documentation to be indexed and accessed through an AI assistant. Maintenance crews can engage in custom dialogues with the AI system for tailored information, eliminating the need for physical manuals or online document searches.

The platform also facilitates ordering replacement components directly through the interface. If a part is not already in the Ivaldi virtual library, users can submit 2D drawings or simple sketches, which the system converts into custom-generated models within pre-engineered categories. Once approved, Ivaldi then creates a printable 3D model and coordinates production and delivery with its partner network of 15,000 local manufacturers.

Espen Sivertsen, Ivaldi CEO, highlights the benefits: “Over eleven billion dollars were lost last year due to spare parts shortages. Providing maintenance crews with better information and faster spare parts access will save companies time and money, reducing risk, improving safety and extending the useful life of equipment.”

Geek+ robots picked 10 billion items in the past year

Geek+, the global leader in mobile robots, has announced that its combined worldwide fleet of robots picked ten billion pieces over the course of the past year. The company’s goods-to-person picking solutions deployed around the world have covered great distances, handled huge volumes of stocks, and, as a result, contributed greatly to the goals of making logistics more efficient and sustainable.

Yong Zheng, Founder and CEO of Geek+, said: “We are very proud of what we have achieved recently. The amount of merchandise that our robots have handled, coupled with the savings in time and energy, demonstrate that mobile robots are a technology for today’s problems and a brighter future.”

Geek+’s picking robots traveled more than 175 million kilometers throughout the year, which is more than the distance from the Earth to the sun. Each day, the number of items managed by Geek+ robots and warehouse management systems reached as much as 750 million.

These combined efforts saved Geek+ customers over 17,000 hours of laborious manual tasks during the year. By switching from manual operations to robotic automation, these Geek+ operators could replace inefficient logistics equipment with modern mobile robots that do not require electric lighting, heating, or air-conditioning. The result was a savings of over 16 million kilowatt hours of energy. This translates into 140 000 tons of carbon emissions: To transport the equivalent amount of coal would require 887 trains.

Over the past year, Geek+ has added new projects and expanded its collaboration with existing clients and continued to learn from its successes. The software behind Geek+’s warehouse management systems was optimized to boost robot efficiency by 15%. Geek+ will continue to improve and enhance its technology and expects further gains in sustainability and efficiency in 2023.

3 Innovative Solutions Shaping The Future Of Agriculture

Getting food from the field to the table is a complex process. Exposure to pests, disease, or harsh weather can impact the quality of the crops. At the same time, climate change is leading to soil degradation and loss of biodiversity while insufficient land increases the pressure to produce more on less space.

At the recent SAP.iO Foundries Sustainable Agriculture Latin America Demo Day, three startups presented solutions that can help farmers improve the quality of their crops, optimize farming strategies through personalization, and improve biological capital by managing soil more efficiently. These tactics can all play a role in successfully feeding 9 billion people for the next decades.

Improving the quality of raw materials

“In the agricultural industries production plans are based on the quality of raw materials,” said Madeleine Valderrama, CEO and Founder of AI Bruna, a supply chain planning solution powered by artificial intelligence developed by AltumLab Chile. She explained that producers expect the quality of raw materials to be consistent, but reality is different. Because it’s impossible to predict quality with complete accuracy, planners deal with variability by improvising, which can lead to increased use of water and energy and up to 20% loss in profitability.

After eight years working in Chile’s salmon farming industry, Valderrama knew what kind of tools would be required to tackle this issue. AI Bruna uses artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms to factor operational restrictions, deficiencies, and defects into strategic harvesting plans. It connects Planning, Harvesting and Commercial areas, providing a strategic view of the entire operation.

Valderrama used the example of Caña Brava, a sugar cane producer in Peru that is using the tool. In the first stage, months before the harvest, AI Bruna uses historical data such as climate, performance, soil type, water usage, and fertilization patterns to predict the expected concentration of sugar in the harvested cane.

Next, it suggests modifications in irrigation or fertilization as the plants are maturing to make sure the cane will satisfy the commercial contract after the harvest. Thanks to AI, Caña Brava was able to reduce water and energy consumption by over 4% and costs by 11%, and increase production capacity by 7%, and the value of the cane as raw material by 17%.

With AI, accurate demand forecasting is possible

Many businesses struggle with demand forecasting. Whether you run a small business or a large enterprise, the challenge of predicting customer behavior and stock levels never gets easier. Even major organizations like Target and Walmart that are able to afford teams of data scientists have recently reported struggles with excess inventory due to poor demand forecasting.

During this time of global uncertainty, many businesses have adopted a just-in-case mindset. They’ve relied on archaic methods of forecasting, scouring old data and drawing poor conclusions based on past problems.

But understanding demand accurately shouldn’t be so much of a struggle in 2023. Even as we battle post-pandemic turmoil, we now have clear alternatives to legacy forecasting tools — thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). And we don’t need endless reams of historical data to access the real-time patterns necessary to accurately forecast demand. In fact, AI-driven demand sensing has been shown to reduce inventory errors in supply chain management by up to 50%, according to McKinsey & Co.

Every company produces data, of course, but it’s almost all trapped in siloes and walled-point solutions that have evolved for specific tasks over many decades. Siloes emerge for noble reasons — they represent a business’s attempts to organize and become structured.

Truthfully, siloes are useful in many scenarios, but if the boundaries between them are too sturdy and there’s a lack of effective communication, siloes will negatively impact business, putting more pressure on processes. Inaccuracies are most common in silo-heavy organizations because teams and departments just don’t have enough of a shared language. Rigid siloes also make data, even good data, less credible.

When working with ThroughPut’s clients, I’ve seen AI make all the difference in demand forecasting. That’s because it can pull from disparate datasets, using real-time patterns to sense the demand around the corner rather than just assuming future demand from past events.

Using an AI-driven system will pick out time-stamped data — regardless of barriers — and rapidly stitch together a global vision of your virtual supply chain network. Supply chain AI processes the best signals from the noise that is constantly being generated by your disparate data systems and turns the din into a song you can understand.

Furthermore, AI is superior at analyzing and making sense of data in vast quantities; yet it also doesn’t need much information to learn. AI trained for real-world applications already intuits which data signals to extract from an ocean of noise, so it can solve needs before they cause problems.

The quality of data is most important, not the quantity, and delaying the use of AI to sense demand is only going to cause current supply challenges to stagnate and potentially get worse. From there, share prices and shareholders suffer. We are seeing this today across industries: innovation laggards and slow adopters paying the price for relying on old forecasting methods.

Wise Systems Expands Delivery Automation Platform

Ultra-high-capacity and enhanced user experience ideal for broad range of industries, including couriers and distribution centers

Wise Systems unveiled an expanded version of its delivery automation platform that offers industry-leading, high-delivery capacity combined with further improvements to the easy-to-use interface. This latest edition gives route planners and dispatchers across industries an ideal mix of power, speed and automation to seamlessly manage large-scale delivery operations.

This enhanced edition of the Wise Systems platform is ideally suited for large-scale, high-volume last-mile delivery fleets across a range of industries, including couriers, retail, food, beverage and others. It is featured in the Wise Systems booth (Booth # 320) at Manifest 2023, a leading conference focused on the ecosystem of innovation and transformation in supply chain and logistics.

The Wise Systems platform expands the ability to route, visualize and manage stops to include large volumes, offering the most intuitive user experiences for planners and dispatchers. It also offers resource flexibility, easily accommodating hybrid workforce models such as a combination of gig workers and FTEs.

“Next-generation delivery software requires the perfect balance of automation and control,” said Chazz Sims, Wise Systems CEO and cofounder. “With additional capacity for high-volume industries, we’re streamlining planning and dispatcher roles, and complementing that with robust tools for managing the delivery day. This platform integrates with our clients’ last-mile ecosystems, and empowers their teams to improve operations while ensuring excellent customer service and driver experiences.”

Camus Energy, Bidgely, and LiveEO identified as leading startups helping utility companies digitize and automate operations

Amid the shift to renewable energy, this Market Map looks at the tech providers helping utility companies like National Grid and Dominion Energy decrease costs while stabilizing power supplies on the grid.

The power grid is currently undergoing some of the biggest operational changes since the adoption of AC power more than a century ago.

The old power grid was centered around large, centralized, fossil fuel-based power plants located away from population centers as well as the use of transmission and distribution lines to connect power generators with power consumers.

Renewable energy sources like solar and wind are now challenging the fossil fuel-based nature of conventional power generation, while new distributed energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar panels are shifting power stations to a more decentralized model. While these changes make the power grid more sustainable, new digitization and automation tech is required to bring these devices onto the grid in a way that is cost-competitive with conventional fossil fuel power generation.

SAP.iO startups Camus Energy, Bidgely, and LiveEO were identified by CB Insights alongside 146 startups as leading startups addressing 8 technology priorities for utility companies, from distributed energy resources to micro-grid/off-grid.

Help Holiday Shoppers Shop with Retail Solutions on SAP Store

This holiday season, consumers are more budget conscious than ever as they react to inflation – and smart retailers are harnessing all the tools available to keep sales up while spending goes down. A seamless shopping experience across channels, simplified product discovery that anticipates buyer needs, price optimization – these are all essential to building customer loyalty and repeat purchasing. And savvy retailers have recognized that the ability to respond to overnight shifts in consumer behavior can be achieved only with the agility enabled by the cloud.

Cloud Solutions for the Agility You Need to React and Respond

With these innovative solutions, SAP and our partners can help you maximize opportunities now during the busiest shopping season and gain momentum for the year ahead. On SAP Store, you’ll find a wide range of solutions that you can try, buy, and deploy quickly. SAP rigorously validates partner solutions for quality, interoperability, and a similar look and feel for usability and fast adoption. Check out these cloud solutions for retail today.

Coveo Search and Recommendation for SAP Commerce – Online buyers can easily and quickly find what they’re looking for, as well as personalized recommendations for what they might be looking for, with this AI-powered industry cloud solution. When shoppers can discover more options in an online product catalog with automated suggestions based on their intent, they tend to buy more.

EcoCart Carbon Neutral Orders – With this solution, your customers can opt to offset the environmental impact of their orders at checkout with a single click and add 1-2% to their total – which can boost conversion and customer loyalty while strengthening your brand. In addition, EcoCart Plus can help you build and execute a comprehensive sustainability strategy.

Retail Suite – Everyday Price by Eversight – Drive sales growth and margins through dynamic AI-powered price optimization with this industry cloud solution that integrates with the SAP Customer Activity Repository application. Even as the cost of goods increases and shopper preferences change, you can set the right price at the right moment by experimenting and benchmarking against the competition – using your own business rules.

Recommerce Management System by Loop Logistics – Shoppers can rent, resale, or buy secondhand products thanks to this solution, which lets you make use of unsold products without discounting or destroying them. This solution, accelerated with the SAP.iO strategic business unit that invests in start-up innovation, helps retailers reduce environmental impact and generate new revenue streams.

Mention Me – This referral marketing platform uses unique data sets to build dynamic conversion programs, helping you increase customer loyalty and advocacy. It harnesses customers’ enthusiasm for your brand and gathers first-party data that allows you to see the true lifetime value of a customer’s propensity to refer. Development of Mention Me was accelerated by SAP.iO.

MyWave.AI Intelligent Personalization Platform – This solution combines AI, personal data, and proactive automation to deliver intelligent personalization at scale. Based on customer preferences in the context of past behavior and intent, MyWave.AI dynamically offers relevant products or advertising along with intelligent cross- and up-sell options.

Threekit 3D and Augmented Reality – This visualization platform allows brands to offer immersive experiences to their customers, who can view, spin, build, and customize products to their specifications. The enhanced product experience gives customers confidence in their selection, increasing conversion rates and reducing returns.

SAP Intelligent Returns Management – Optimize your margin on returns and enhance the customer experience by guiding them through a smooth product return that keeps them engaged and updated throughout the process. The solution also helps you identify key trends early and mitigate issues to drive correction actions and optimize assortments and price points.

SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing – This solution enables consistent pricing for promotions across all sales channels, calculating effective prices for a product or set of products by applying promotional rules. The result is a consistent buying experience across the Web, sales order, point of sale, and so on. An administration service deletes obsolete prices and promotional rules.

Zoovu Conversational Assistants for SAP Commerce & Sales Cloud – This solution for product discovery makes it easy to find, evaluate, and buy by bringing context to the search. It guides the buyer through the process with relevant questions and interactive buying advice. Conversational assistants enrich product content automatically with industry-specific taxonomies and work across all industries.

You can find the full list of cloud solutions from SAP and our partners for retail on SAP Store here, many available for a demo or free trial.

SAP.iO In Foundries, Portfolio News, Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

Clarifruit raises $12 million to reduce waste in the fruit and vegetable industry

Clarifruit, a company developing a software platform for automated quality control for fruit and vegetable supply chains, has announced that it has completed a $12 million Series A round led by Champel Capital and Firstime Ventures with participation from Kubota, a provider of agricultural machinery and technologies, and NevaTeam Partners venture capital fund. It brings the company’s total funding to $15 million following a grant of $2.5 million received through Horizon 2020.

The company hopes to reduce waste in the fresh produce supply chain, an industry estimated to be valued at $2 trillion, and secure a sufficient food supply for future generations. Its solution addresses challenges in quality control and decision-making and the lack of standardized and objective quality control processes when assessing fruits and vegetables. It is estimated that this problem leads to a waste of 45% of the agricultural production in the industry, representing approximately $900 billion of loss every year.

“Since we launched our product 20 months ago, we have been able to make a significant impact and onboard tens of leading global players into our circle of clients that are now using Clarifruit’s advanced technology to automate their quality control and provide real-time info to reduce waste and maximize revenue opportunities,” said Elad Mardix, Co-Founder and CEO of Clarifruit.

Its platform has two elements: the first is a mobile app allowing quality inspects to conduct quality control processes in minutes. The second is a cloud-based control system that allows operation managers to monitor the process specific to their company and its goals, results, and insights all in real-time. It uses computer vision technology with Big Data and analytics capabilities to help retailers, wholesalers, marketing companies, and growers make data-driven decisions to reduce waste.

Inspiring Innovators: Leanne Kemp Founder and CEO of Everledger, On Transparency

At SAP.iO, we work with innovative people and new technologies that positively impact our world every day, and we think it’s time to share their stories with you! In our series, “Inspiring Innovators,” we get to hear how leaders of cutting-edge startup technologies overcame, thrived, and pursued their goals. SAP.iO’s Alexa Gorman sat down to discuss the road to success and lessons learned with some of our most inspiring startup founders.

Meet Leanne Kemp

The word that describes the central theme coming from our conversation with Leanne Kemp is transparency. It is a word that describes both who she is as an entrepreneur and the significant value her company brings to the marketplace.

Starting as a software engineer, she began in RFID technology in the mid-90s with radio frequency identification at the silicon chip and inlay level. Leanne has built a career through evolutionary advancements in supply chain traceability for the past 25 years covering various industry disciplines, founding and exiting three companies before creating at Everledger. Firmly understanding importance of transparency Leanne chose to focus on some of the most challenging industries globally, ultimately deciding to concentrate on conflicted and opaque supply chains.

“Being an entrepreneur, firstly through and through, as well as having an engineering background and understanding the disciplines of business, enabled me to have the perfect triangulation of skill set to be able to take my idea or vision for change and then enable that in such a way where I can craft it with my own hands.”

Everledger helps businesses identify and converge asset information using a combination of secure technologies, including blockchain, AI, and IoT, to create greater clarity and confidence in marketplaces where transparency is a strategic imperative. This trusted transparency platform builds a connected system where reputable people buy, sell & promote assets with verified provenance, authenticity & sustainability data.

In Leanne’s role as the founder and CEO of Everledger, she inspires transparency and trust with technology and has become a prominent figure in the technology sector. Leanne co-chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Manufacturing and participates in the Global Future Council on Blockchain. In 2018, her entrepreneurial success saw her appointed as the Queensland Chief Entrepreneur in Australia to develop the state’s startup ecosystem, attract investment, and support job creation. She was the first female entrepreneur to hold this position.