Supply Chain Management Archives • Page 6 of 11 • SAP.iO

SAP.iO In Berlin, Supply Chain Management

Plug and Play invests in GenLots

GenLots uses machine learning SaaS to optimize supply planning, saving up to 30% on inventory values and 50% on inbound logistics costs. The startup has received investment from the global accelerator Plug and Play.

With the launch of its Safety Stock Optimizer in 2020, GenLots’s founder and Co-CEO Simon Schenker introduced the first platform fully dedicated to supply planning aiming to transform existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that have barely changed in the past 30 years.

The Geneva-based startup combines a new costing model and proprietary reinforcement learning algorithm, which builds optimal supply strategies, breaking down the financial impact of planning decisions in real-time and drawing simulations on purchasing parameters and more. With their approach, GenLots achieves up to 50% reduction in inbound deliveries (which positively impacts the CO2 footprint), up to 30% reduction in inventory, and leverages discounts negotiated by procurement departments. These results become visible within three months as GenLots is served by rapid integration – as SAP Silver Partner. Furthermore, GenLots enhances the experience for supply planners and their colleagues in related departments and helps create a standard throughout the company.

Players in consumer goods, pharma, chemicals and industrial goods use the platform. Among them are large companies like Barry Callebaut, a global leader in chocolate production, Huber + Suhner, a major Swiss manufacturing company and pharma company Merck.

Sustainable AI Turns Small Data Into Huge Results For Manufacturers And Researchers

Sparse modeling AI is edging out traditional deep learning to become the technology of choice for product manufacturers and medical researchers because it ticks off all the boxes for modern quality control: explainability, energy efficiency, and speed. Just ask some of the customers from Hacarus, a Japan-based startup that’s developed a standout AI-fueled visual inspection solution.

“Sparse modeling AI is a surprising revelation for our clients that need to innovate faster while meeting high-quality standards, whether it’s electric vehicles, luxury watches, or drug discovery,” said Kenshin Fujiwara, CEO and founder of Hacarus. “They’re amazed at how we’re tackling traditional AI’s dirty secret, reducing the high energy costs of data collection and training, which saves time and our planet’s resources.”

A green, explainable AI alternative

According to some studies, training a single AI model using traditional machine learning (ML) can equal the carbon emissions of five cars across their entire lifecycles. That’s because ML algorithms attempt to “understand” every detail gleaned from huge amounts of data from scratch. In contrast, sparse modeling doesn’t require training from tens of thousands of images to yield a strong model for prediction. Because it starts with built-in assumptions, restrictions, and hypotheses, sparse modeling saves time by ignoring what’s already known. This reduces computational time and energy consumption.

On the factory floor, manufacturers need far fewer samples of both good and bad product parts to train the AI model, speeding up visual product inspections to detect defects and anomalies without sacrificing sustainability. Inside research labs, sparse modeling yields more explainable AI. For example, scientists exploring new drug treatments can more easily distinguish chemical compound reactions. In one pilot project with a pharmaceutical company in Japan, Hacarus’ solution performed 56 times faster than a deep learning algorithm.

“Sparse modeling is ideal for any precision engineering equipment or research company developing advanced products with less data,” Fujiwara. “Electric vehicle parts are a great example because it’s a brand new sector. Automakers and suppliers can create a reliable, AI-based model with as little as 20 images. It delivers the equivalent results of deep learning in a fraction of the time and energy.”

Ingredients database helps companies launch better food products

AI-powered software analyses millions of ingredients to find the best fit for a particular product

According to food tech company Journey Foods, the global food industry is broken, with supply chain inefficiencies, sustainability failings, and malnutrition adding up to a broken system. In response, the US startup proposes a clear solution: data.

Journey Foods provides a suite of tools to help teams developing new food products understand everything about the lifecycle of their products, from the environmental impact of ingredients, to supply inefficiencies and opportunities for cost savings. At the heart of the offering is a vast database that contains information on millions of products and ingredients – amounting to 17 billion individual datapoints in total. AI is used to sift through all this information and provide recommendations for ingredients based on factors such as nutrition, sustainability, cost, and packaging requirements.

SAP.iO In Fund, Supply Chain Management

Shippeo Expands in North America

Shippeo, a global leader in real-time transportation visibility, announces today it’s expanding its North American operations and U.S. executive team, as well as enhancing its customer-centric, multi-modal visibility platform. The systemwide enhancements will support global customers and the company’s growing North American customer base.

During this time of supply chain disruption, when visibility data is a lifeline enabling companies to proactively manage freight flows, Shippeo will accelerate the number of secure, direct integrations with U.S.-based trucking companies, logistics providers and ocean carriers, and have access to data from their terminal and port operator trading partners. This will build out Shippeo’s comprehensive, global, neutral partner network to augment the flow of visibility data to customers.

Shippeo’s presence in North America has uncovered an underserved aspect of the market’s visibility offerings, the customer-centric supply chain. By putting customers and their ecosystem of suppliers first, Shippeo has achieved a dominant leadership position in Europe and the Middle East with over 130 customers, including global brands such as, Coca-Cola, Schneider Electric, Sappi, Kuehne + Nagel, ThyssenKrupp and Saint-Gobain. In addition, 97% of Shippeo’s customers on Gartner Peer Insights would recommend the Shippeo Visibility Platform.*

Shippeo’s aim is to provide customers with the critical visibility data needed to increase operational agility and efficiency, strengthen their company’s supply chain execution and deliver a better experience for their customers.

H3 Dynamics Launches Autonomous Drone Stations to Help Monitor Large Solar Farms

H3 Dynamics is announcing a new Robots-as-a-service solution for autonomous solar farm monitoring in partnership with Sitemark, a specialist AI-analytics company from Belgium.

The new partnership combines the DBX drone-in-a-box robots from H3 Dynamics with visual & thermal analytics from Sitemark to automate and scale up remote monitoring operations in large solar farm installations. Sitemark’s solutions have been deployed by Total, Bouygues, EDF, Engie and Orix to inspect over 30,000 ha of solar PV parks in 35 countries.

Designed as the “eyes and ears” of solar farm owners and operators, the DBX robot (video) can be deployed permanently at solar farms to track solar farm construction progress, identify solar panel degradation and provide on-site security.

“The unique combination of Sitemark Fuse and H3 Dynamics’ DBX will change the way data is captured and processed throughout the entire lifecycle of solar power assets”, says Michiko Lloyd, CEO of Sitemark.

H3 Dynamics is automating inspections across smart cities, precision agriculture, water infrastructure, and ports. Last month the company announced DBX G7, an agnostic Drone-in-a-Box platform capable of automating drones from any manufacturer, and deploying expert analytics from any developer.

In the wake of Covid-19, we are shifting the global drone industry towards an open tele-operations paradigm. “Our goal is to provide the world’s best data services from specialist vendors all over the world, available at any of our DBX installations globally” says Taras Wankewycz, H3 Dynamics’ CEO.

Inspectorio Raises $50 Million To Help Brands Ensure Quality In Their Supply Chain

Supply chain is a web that spans so wide that many large corporations can’t easily track the entire life cycle for each of its products — let alone capture enough data to ensure that everything is being done to standards and protocol. Carlos Moncayo knows the system all too well as the former founder and CEO of ASIAM Inspector, a company that supports brands and retailers with sourcing operations in Asia, he did everything from inspections to auditing to sourcing. This gave Moncayo deep insight on the many layers of the supply chain and it wasn’t pretty. He noticed a lot of issues surrounding visibility. After 10 years with the company, he was surprised they hadn’t gotten any better.

“We thought with supply chain management and production chain management, the only way to solve [the issues] was to approach it from moving offline relations to online relations and helping companies make sense of the data coming out of that,” he tells Forbes. But at the time, no one was trying to tackle that, so the former founders of ASIAM decided to try it themselves. They launched Inspectorio in 2016 to help companies and brands move their supply chain online and have better visibility and data surrounding quality and sustainability. Since Inspectorio launched its first product in 2017, the company has expanded its product offerings and more than 7,000 customers including Target and Kohl’s have signed on.

The Minneapolis-based startup raises a $50 million Series B round led by Insight Partners with participation from Techstar Ventures, Matchstick Ventures and strategic backers including Flexport, among others, as originally reported in Midas Touch newsletter. Ryan Hinkle, a managing director at Insight, says the firm has been building a relationship with Inspectorio since the beginning of the startup’s life. While the investment could have been sparked by the company’s progress — Hinkle points to the startup’s 93% revenue growth in 2021 — for him it was a bit more personal. His family used to own a clothing store and he remembers helping unwrap shirts and using a measuring tape to ensure the sleeves were the same length and that the size labels matched when he was a kid. Both of which would fall under the quality control assurances Inspectorio looks to provide further down the supply chain.

Blockchain Helps Luxury Retailers Prove Provenance And Sustainability Claims

Diamonds and girls have been best friends for centuries, but that friendship has long come at a high cost for the communities involved in the excavation and processing of these highly coveted gems. Thanks to shifts in consumer behavior, however, sustainability considerations are now on par with price and design for consumers when purchasing diamonds, according to new research published by De Beers Group.

And it is high time. The mine-to-market journey contains a myriad of social and environmental impacts at every step of the way. From soil erosion, deforestation, and the destruction of ecosystems to the appalling working conditions, low wages, and child labor rampant in the industry, there is certainly a dark side to the way people have acquired their sparkling stones. The upside is that the industry creates high levels of employment and makes up a significant part of the GDPs of the countries that produce them.

Tackling these issues requires crystal clear insight into the value chain. Tools and services from Everledger, for example, enable independent retailers to easily reference the origin, human rights, and environmental performance of their diamond listings from the world’s leading producers. The global digital transparency company based in the UK uses blockchain to track goods from raw materials to the end consumer and beyond – making it ideal for retailers implementing circular business models.

Smart IoT tracking startup Tag-n-Trac launches with $10M in new funding

“Internet of things” tracking startup Tag-n-Trac Inc. today launched out of stealth with $10 million in new funding.

Dell Technologies led the Series A round, with Merck Global Innovation Fund and Aerosafe Global also participating. Including the new funding, Tag-n-Trac has raised $11.8 million to date, according to data from Crunchbase.

Founded in 2020, Tag-n-Trac was founded with the goal of modernizing the entire logistics lifecycle. The company offers a full-stack IoT solution that integrates multiple modes of hardware, software and data technology to build smarter solutions that solve complex problems. The founding team consists of senior executives with engineering leadership experience in WiFi, Bluetooth, sensors and positioning technologies.

Tag-n-Trac says its platform offers complete, real-time visibility into the entire global supply chain ecosystem. The company’s technology combines low-cost “printable” hardware sensors and a sensor-agnostic software-asa-serivce platform to help shippers, logistics providers and manufacturers track goods’ location, status and condition from manufacturing to shipping to delivery.

The Tag-n-Trac platform, powered by wireless Bluetooth and cellular smart label technologies, grants a complete end-to-end view to help efficiently address production obstacles such as temperature excursions, tamper detection and potential diversions. Usable in various verticals, Tag-n-Trac works with supply chain partners, including multi-modal third-party logistics, enterprise resource planning, business intelligence software providers, and packaging and labeling manufacturers.

Verusen Raises $25M in Series B Funding

Verusen, an Atlanta, GA-based provider of tools to manage materials for global supply chains, raised $25m in Series B funding.

The round was led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from current investors Glasswing Ventures, Flyover Capital, Zetta Venture Partners, Forte Ventures, BMW i Ventures, and Kubera VC.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate its global footprint, and further build out its AI-driven technology platform expanding its reach in both the Indirect MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) and Direct Materials space.

Innovating Retail Sustainability with Startups leveraging SAP.iO

https://events.sap.com/noam/nrf/en/videopage.aspx?v=oluBrjrC1RmjVd4M11BDCyn5//79teGPMq+DGevdtkr0ft7t+m5PcL4AdgijZ2ITqCH1mnGNAJ831GmCK+8RXeza1AuCgy2VD+zAkWXZS3U=

This week at the SAP Digital NRF Experience Chantal Emmanuel, CTO and Co-founder of Limeloop, and Kange Kaneene, Vice President SAP.iO Foundries North America sat down with Megan Meany to discuss how Limeloop is innovating to save waste from packages associated with online shopping via reusable packaging paired with a shipping platform that provides reverse logistics, security and more.

Catch the interview here!

SAP.iO In Foundries, New York, Tel Aviv, Supply Chain Management

Fix the Massive Truck Driver Shortage with Data

Hidden in the furor about disrupted supply chains is how the experience of the drivers delivering all those goods directly impacts the customer experience. That’s where Wise Systems comes in, offering an artificial intelligence (AI)-based delivery management platform that originated at the Media Lab at MIT, when three of the company’s co-founders responded to a professor’s challenge to find the best way to change one billion lives with data.

“The free flow of goods is the lifeblood of communities,” said Allison Parker, vice president of Marketing at Wise Systems. “We decided to apply machine learning to real-time data that captures what’s happening on the ground so organizations can better plan and continuously improve every last-mile route and delivery. Drivers have an intuitive, easier experience managing their schedule directly from their mobile devices, while fleet managers have up-to-the-minute plan tracking for resource allocation and utilization.”

Sustainable Retail Business Solutions from SAP Showcased During NRF 2022

The retail industry’s $3.9 trillion contribution to the U.S. annual GDP makes it the nation’s leading industry for private sector employment and uniquely positioned to address climate change.

As recently as the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) meetings, the National Retail Federation (NRF) stated, “Retailers will continue inventing and implementing pragmatic climate change solutions because the needs identified at COP26 demand nothing less.”

To help retailers digitally transform to make their businesses sustainable, SAP is featuring a number of offerings, including these:

The new SAP Intelligent Returns Management solution was built to optimize the returns process for the retail industry. The solution uses routing and dispositioning decisions driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to guide products from customers’ hands to the final dispositioning steps, ultimately maximizing customer experience and company margins while also mitigating waste.
The recently updated SAP Assortment Planning application now offers advanced category management capabilities. It uses customer data science, assortment strategies, business rules and AI to plan space-aware, localized assortments with a user experience designed for the needs of today’s category manager. Customer-centric, relevant assortments increase customer loyalty, boost profitability and support a more sustainable supply chain.
The SAP.iO Foundries program is a network of startup companies with integrations to SAP solutions, including:
- Algramo, offering a circular platform that encourages consumers to buy in a more convenient, affordable way with zero waste and connects people, brands and retailers in an engaging way to change consumption habits
- EcoCart, helping thousands of e-commerce brands offer carbon-neutral products
- Everledger, leveraging blockchain and the Internet of Things to offer transparency into supply chains for clarity on quality, origin, sustainability footprint and compliance standards
- EVRYTHNG, helping customers run their businesses differently with real-time data intelligence from each of their products end to end, from factory to consumer and beyond
- Inspectorio, with a dynamic and risk-assessment-based quality compliance program that provides digitalization, automation, transparency and traceability
- LimeLoop, offering a platform for sustainable shipping including reusable packaging, real-time tracking and predictive analytics
- Specright, providing a purpose-built platform for specification management that fundamentally changes how brands, suppliers, manufacturers and retailers manage data and collaborate to bring products to market

Cogniac Applauded for Enabling Widespread Commercial Adoption of Computer Vision Systems

After recent analysis of the global Computer Vision industry, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Cogniac with the 2021 Global Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award for Computer Vision. The company develops easily deployable, cost-effective, and highly customizable Computer Vision solutions, enabling widespread commercial adoption across different industries. The Computer Vision platform is capable of ingesting video and images from virtually any visual inspection task. Tracking, detecting, comparing, contrasting and assessing product quality changes for analysis at a global enterprise scale. Computer Vision systems are used in manufacturing and industrial environments such as automotive and mill and mining, where they increase quality and reduce cost. Such systems are also used for asset inspection, tracking, and management in transportation including railways and trucking, and in various logistics, government, and safety/security applications.

3i Inc. Receives CES 2022 Innovation Award For Pivo Pod X

Pivo Inc. of 3i Inc., a metaverse technology company that develops products utilizing artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR), announced that it has been named a Best of Innovation Award Honoree at CES 2022. The announcement was made on January 3rd in the media event, which precedes the Consumer Electronics Show 2022 (CES 2022), the world’s largest consumer electronics exhibition show.

Pivo Pod X, Pivo’s award winning product, is the new addition to the company’s robust lineup of auto-tracking smart pods that enhance the capabilities of your smartphone. Pivo Pod X is a re-envisioning of the original Pivo Pod with its added software features, longer battery life and highly requested vertical tracking. The Pod X, along with its powerful suite of apps, enables creators to produce dynamic, high-quality photos, videos, 360° images and 3D virtual tours. Thanks to Pivo’s proprietary Face, Body, Object and Animal Tracking, creators are no longer limited to stagnant content, even when creating alone. The product is set to be released in the second quarter of 2022.

LiLz uses computer vision to read gauges and dials where humans prefer not to tread

No one wants to be the maintenance worker who has to hike through half a mile of damp hallways just to check the pressure gauge on a valve somewhere. LiLz makes it possible to keep an eye on such inconvenient physical interfaces remotely with a clever and practical application of machine learning.

The Japanese (specifically Okinawan) startup has been around for a little while — in fact our colleagues at TC JP have written them up. But despite the seemingly obvious value of its service, it hasn’t quite hit the big time yet. LiLz participated in CES as part of the country’s trade group, along with a bunch more companies listed here.

LiLz’s device looks a bit like a chubby tablet without a screen. It’s essentially a camera, light and processing and communications chips packed in with a big battery — enough power to last up to three years.

You mount the device so it can see the gauge or dial in question. After confirming picture and signal, you configure it in the app to interpret what it’s pointed at; it can read circular, semicircular and linear gauges, digital and rolling or analog digit displays, or things like colored warning lights.

Once it’s set up, it’ll send readings live or at intervals to a central dashboard, or make them available via API so they can be queried or recorded elsewhere. The data goes out via LTE or Bluetooth.