The challenge 

Annually, around a third of all food produced around the world is wasted. Countless resources including water, land and energy are used to produce crops that are never consumed. In the Netherlands, dairy is among the most fequently discarded products. This year, well over 300 million litres of milk, yoghurt and cream will be lost in our country alone. The main source of this squander is excessive safety stock: dairy can spend up to 75% of its shelf life in warehouses and trucks. Here products get lost, damaged, or perish. Once in consumer's kitchens, produce must be consumed within days or be thrown away.

The solution

Our solution: ensure consumers get their dairy products as fresh as possible. We aim to minimize the time these products spend in the supply chain, for example as safety stock, instead of in customers kitchen's. By enhancing information sharing between suppliers, distributors and retailers we ensure orders are placed only for what customers need, instead of what replenishment policies prescribe . By improving forecasts using artificial intelligence, we improve decisionmaking about the allocation of safety stock. Furthermore, real-time feedback about the performance of the system will give various players the chance to immediately correct undesirable behavior.

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