The sales volumes in the beverage market are very volatile and depend on numerous external factors. This is causing problems when planning sales projections. The red-brewery is also affected by these difficulties. This research project, in collaboration with the Furtwangen University (HFU), has been developed in order to better avoid supply bottlenecks and overproduction. The goal of the project was to implement an AI-supported paragraph-forecast in macs, which the Rothaus brewery provides more accurate forecasts. The following steps were part of the project:
- Developing a data collection method
- Separating relevant and irrelevant external data
- Feed the algorithms and external data into the macs software
- Forecast by using the external, as well as existing internal data
The plan
The idea was to extend the macs component "Sales Planning" through the use of new statistical algorithms and neural networks in a holistic approach. With our extensive experience through numerous customer projects, we recognized early on the potential of reliable sales planning. Thanks to the funding programme "Central Innovation Programme Mittelstand" (ZIM) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, we were able to successfully implement this idea.
The implementation
An important project criterion was to ensure that the application is simple and user-friendly. This included the design of the user interface and the programming of the interfaces to seamlessly integrate the results of the static algorithms into the application. The University of Furtwangen University (HFU) was on board as a scientific partner in order to provide theoretical models and to carry out the data analysis. Ensuring the correctness and effectiveness of the algorithms and data analysis techniques used was crucial, including continuous monitoring of the results and the improvement of the algorithms, if necessary.
The Baden State Brewery Rothaus asked itself as a pilot customer, as this company has a strong interest in data and technology, and brought a new understanding of the processing of data and operational processes. There one was immediately enthusiastic about the idea of optimizing the sales planning in the future with the help of artificial intelligence. Together, we developed a prototype for sales planning.
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