Semantic AI Drives Supply Chain Management
Industries:
Consumer Goods & ServicesProducts:
SemaphoreFull Story
Challenge
The information regarding lane management, which includes lane assessment information, monitoring, and KPI indicators, is manually gathered and calculated each month. The process requires multiple staff members, takes hundreds of hours to generate and is expensive. The relevant data is gathered from multiple disparate systems; by the time the information is calculated and distributed, it’s out of date.
The organization lacks a single platform to connect diverse and disconnected information to create meaningful analytics. The information used to manage logistics is located internal and external to the enterprise. Documents that are similar contain different data and often the same data is represented in different ways as the process of collecting and managing logistic information has evolved over time.
Key data points are buried in textual documents and the organization is dependent upon external providers such as transport companies, to provide them with critical pieces of information to manage the business. As the data is not connected, there are semantic gaps and a lack of master data oversight.
Solution
The organization leveraged existing Semaphore models and extended them to include logistics and transportation information such as the shipper, transport provider, transportation types, carriers, and company sites. They use the expanded knowledge model to normalize disparate terminologies across systems and create a single harmonized 360-degree view of the relevant information.
Semaphore’s Fact Extraction Framework (FACTS) is a key component in the solution. By creating a document fingerprint (schema) of the relevant fields from the forms, the required information can be identified, tagged, and leveraged in the analytics process.
Harmonizing the data provides efficiencies; information can be aggregated and reused, and direct and opportunity savings identified. The time and staff required to develop the metrics are reduced and the information is timely and of high quality. Report generation is created and delivered to the business in a timely manner allowing them to optimize both shipper and carrier lane selection.
Result
Today the organization is driving efficiencies through data optimization. By harmonizing all information into a 360-degree view, lane metrics are efficiently and economically calculated, compliance obligations are easily met, and the business can make course corrections and alter business practices when required.
Future opportunities and benefits to integrate supplier data have been identified; create awareness of geopolitical events that may impact deliveries, and identify and redirect impacted shipments when required.
A strong digital foundation allows the organization to capture, analyze, integrate, access, and interpret high quality, real-time data to fuel further automation, enhance predictive analytics, and improve business outcomes.