Improving The Supply Chain with Machine Learning

Key objectives

  • Build new client solutions quickly and efficiently
  • Reduce technical maintenance costs
  • Improve time-to-value
  • Enhance projects’ profitability
  • Enable repeatable engagements

 

Key outcomes

  • Fast deployment on the Cloud: From 90% down to 0% of a project’s time and resources for Cloud deployment
  • Only 1 month to set-up and deploy the solution
  • Only 2 engineers needed
  • Very short training time
  • Cost-effective development
  • Low maintenance and upkeep expenses
  • Easy collaboration between data engineers, data scientists, and project leaders.

 

Discover the modern Supply Chain with Machine Learning. Machine learning in supply chain: Adameo builds customized supply chain solutions for its clients more cost-effectively with the ForePaaS Platform analytics and machine learning. Find out how Machine Learning is transforming Supply Chain.

 

Context

Adameo, the human Supply Chain solution provider, was looking to add a new platform to the lab by adameo, to help them quickly and efficiently create customized Supply Chain management applications for their clients. As they potentially could use this platform to set up several client solutions, it needed to be easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, extremely powerful, and provide a quick Time-To-Value.

They didn’t want to use different technologies for different tasks. They wanted a platform filled with all the functionality needed to easily build client applications and manage the complete data workflows - from data collection to consumption - in one place. They also sought a platform that was accessible to all team members working on a project, so they could work on the same datasets, processes, and algorithms, avoiding communication breakdowns, forgotten tasks, and effort duplications.

A first good match for the ForePaaS Platform was quickly found in a leading provider of sanitation, hygiene, and infection protection solutions. They summoned adameo’s services for a cloud-based Supply Chain solution with process monitoring, analytics, and advanced operation optimization algorithms. Adameo was able to build the solution for this client in just 2 months.

Adameo was able to build repeatable engagements with the ForePaaS Platform. On the heels of the first project, they’re building a second Supply Chain solution with the ForePaaS Platform for a second client: a global agriculture company focused on maximizing productivity at all levels. This client provides farmers around the world with a complete portfolio of seed, crop protection, and digital solutions.

Challenges

Before choosing the ForePaaS Platform, adameo was faced with the decision to either hire a team of Cloud infrastructure (like Azure or AWS) experts and face a 6–12-month project, or simply use the cost-effective ForePaaS Platform.

Without the ForePaaS Platform, building solutions for their clients with a Cloud services provider would require hiring a large group of experts to create, manage and maintain the application and infrastructure. Deployment, maintenance, and security were also big concerns. Cloud services providers don’t assist well in managing cloud-based data centers, which means that adameo or their clients would still need to hire professionals that know how to use these Cloud services and handle server monitoring and patching. They were also concerned about potentially over-provisioning their Cloud services, which could get very costly.

Solution: Supply Chains with Machine Learning

The ForePaaS Platform gave adameo the fast Time-To-Value they were looking for. It first proved to be very easy-to-learn and use. Its self-serve design approach, means that it is ready-to-go, with no set-up required. It enabled adameo to quickly design the application their client was looking for and smoothly deploy it, without hiring additional expensive expertise.

It only took adameo 2 engineers and 2 months to design, set-up and deploy the first solution. These 2 engineers worked on other projects, which means that only 1 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) month for 2 engineers was required to fully complete the project. The 2 engineers, a data engineer and a data scientist, easily collaborated together thanks to the ForePaaS Platform’s collaborative functions. Several other team members including a UI designer and a project managers could easily have been added to collaborate on the project.

 

We were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to learn how to use the ForePaaS Platform, and how quickly and easily we were able to build a fully functional application for our clients. Our clients can benefit very quickly from this solution,” said Guillaume Mullier, Innovation Director at adameo.

 

The 2 months included learning how to use the ForePaaS Platform. ForePaaS’ involvement was minimal. Only 2 half-days were needed the first week, 1 half-day the second week, and 1 hour support here and there during the remainder of the project. After the first month, the adameo engineers were practically autonomous.

 

We estimated that if we didn’t use the ForePaaS Platform, and worked directly on a Cloud services infrastructure, it would have required us an estimated 6 to 8 engineers with deep Cloud expertise, and about 9 to 12 months to complete the project. We calculated in the past that 90% of a project’s time and resources are consumed with the deployment to the Cloud. With the ForePaaS Platform, the deployment took no time at all. We clicked a few buttons - the deployment was basically automatic”, continued Mr. Mullier.

 

The reasons for the huge time and efficiency gains with the ForePaaS Platform are two-fold: Its easy-to-use interface, and its powerful back-end system management.

The ForePaaS Platform interface allows adameo to easily create a sophisticated and visually attractive Supply Chain application fully customized to clients unique requirements. Deploying it to the Cloud, Azure in this case, was also straightforward.

In the back-end, the ForePaaS Platform automates of all the technical tasks, including hands-off management of the underlying Cloud services. All the data workflows, storage, security and dependencies are seamlessly taken care. Gone are the days of maintaining different software versions - when upgrading one piece of software to a new version, a bunch of tests and integration work needed to be done. Cloud scalability is also transparently handled by the ForePaaS Platform, leading to no surprises on the provisioning side.

Adameo has fledged: They’re managing other projects with the ForePaaS Platform, practically on their own. They trained newly-hired staff themselves with minimal support from ForePaaS.

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