Damate group of companies invests ₽100 million in a mathematical modeling system

The press center of the Damate group of companies announces the start of the development of fully automated solutions for sales forecasting and order balancing based on mathematics and machine learning. The amount of investment in projects, the launch of which will save 135 million rubles annually, will exceed 100 million.

The development will be carried out by specialists from two specially created corporate laboratories: mathematical modeling and artificial intelligence (Math Lab) and innovations (Innovation Lab). Employees of these divisions of the holding have a specialized education and extensive experience in using mathematical modeling to optimize production and analyze data.

The projects will be implemented in stages as part of the strategy for the development of turkey production and processing in the Penza region. In the summer of 2021, it is planned to complete the first stage: it will create the platform necessary for the further development of innovative solutions.

Until now, sales forecasting in all divisions of the holding was carried out manually, which made it impossible to take into account many factors, and therefore did not provide the necessary planning accuracy. As a result, Damate's capacities were by no means always fully loaded. In the presence of real orders, it is very important to find out which of them need to be taken first and to what extent to satisfy. At the same time, it is necessary to compare the importance of the client, marginality and profitability of orders. So far, balancing is also done manually, which does not meet the needs of the business at the current stage of development.

Efim Boer, Vice President of the Damate Group of Companies for Mathematical Modeling and Artificial Intelligence, explained that with hundreds of orders, commodity item identifiers (SKUs) and customers, a business expert faces a task with millions of combinations, and a person is obviously not able to find the optimal solution , because such problems belong to the field of mathematical - combinatorial - optimization, and are best solved by algorithmic methods. According to him, Math Lab and Innovation Lab specialists will develop a technology that will help experts choose the best solutions.

Accurate forecasting of orders will provide the ability to plan the release of products of certain categories, order the necessary volumes of packaging materials, schedule poultry slaughter, freezing, promotions and other business processes. As a result, Damate will use its production capacities to the maximum and build long-term relationships with customers by increasing the degree of order coverage.

Solutions to be developed as part of mathematical modeling projects include collection and validation of data from various sources, analysis and development of forecasting algorithms, and creation of reports for the user. They are based on an in-depth and detailed understanding of business processes, mathematical models and algorithms, which implies the correct work with data: recording, storage, access and transmission. In addition, Math Lab plans include further improvement of the system, development of its own advanced algorithms using time series and neural networks (ANN) and expansion of functionality to other sites of the Damate group of companies.