Business
Bega Cheese selects Software AG to provide IoT dairy supply chain solution
The deal will see Software AG providing Bega Cheese with IoT solutions to provide real-time data on milk production at farmer suppliers including volumes, temperature, quality composition, and transport conditions, to gain efficiencies in pickup and delivery frequency to reduce costs and improve traceability.
According to Adel Salman, GM Supply Chain at Bega Cheese, the company knew that IoT could be an excellent solution, especially with the use of real-time data for both inbound and outbound activities in the company’s supply chain.
“What we didn’t have was the experience in setting up IoT projects, so we started looking around for a partner that could provide us with IoT expertise, resources, industry contacts, and help with government backing,” said Salman.
“The Swinburne University of Technology with its Internet of Things Lab and Industry 4.0 initiatives as well as its research partnership with Software AG was the perfect collaborator for us. Swinburne University listened to what we needed to achieve and together with Software AG, developed an IoT strategy with a set of solutions that met our needs. The university has also been instrumental in helping us to successfully apply for a research grant from the federal government’s Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P),” added Salman.
Tony Drewitt, Head of IoT ANZ, Software AG, said: “We’re excited to have this opportunity to work with Bega Cheese, one of Australia’s largest dairy producers. The work Bega Cheese is doing in the milk supply chain area is revolutionary. With Cumulocity, Bega Cheese will have real-time data and insights which will allow it to enhance its supply chain productivity and competitiveness with just-in-time milk pickup and processing requirements on a large scale.”
The scope of the project will include:
– a novel low-cost milk quality sensor enabled for IoT
– an IoT ‘live’ Supply Chain Monitoring system for continuous real-time monitoring of milk supply quantity and quality, farm conditions (i.e. humidity and temperature) affecting milk production, and milk pickup events across the supply chain
– a Dynamic Pickup Scheduling and Monitoring tool that utilizes sensor data reporting milk supply change events to automatically maintain optimal pickup schedules, and pickup events to monitor schedule and process adherence
– a predictive machine learning-based Highly Accurate Forecasting tool for milk quality and quantity that exploits live and long-term historical data from sensors across the supply chain
– a Farmer App that provides milk forecasting together with milk quality and pickup alerts
Swinburne University will also develop and build unique new IoT sensors specifically for Bega Cheese.
“We’re excited to see the benefits that IoT can bring to our company. By working with Swinburne University and Software AG, we hope to be able to increase our growth across higher-value premium products thus enhancing the competitiveness for both Bega and our suppliers,” said Salman.
“We also aim to increase the company’s supply chain sustainability by reducing milk wastage and fuel consumption of our milk transport partners.”
The project is expected to run for a period of 12 to 18 months.