Input Stories

Cargill, General Mills and other food manufacturers are reducing waste with the help of artificial intelligence (The Minnesota Star Tribune, subscription).

What’s going on: The Minnesota-based companies are “enthusiastically embracing artificial intelligence, adopting the technology to make innovation, supply chains, marketing and manufacturing more efficient.”

• For example, at a Cargill slaughterhouse in Texas, AI-equipped cameras scan cattle carcasses to let employees know when too much meat has been left on the bone, as “[e]ven a 1% improvement in yield could produce millions more pounds of meat a year.”
• And “[f]or the cereal-maker, AI is about building new capabilities that help the company ‘stay on top of evolving consumer behaviors and external trends,’” General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening said recently.

People required: But manufacturers still need people, industry leaders emphasize.

• “[Brett Brohl, a managing partner of Bread and Butter Ventures,] said AI will ‘make people more efficient and effective’ rather than replace them in the near term.”

How it helps: AI at food manufacturers is reducing waste in several ways, including via the following:

• Demand forecasting: Letting businesses know how much product to make is saving money in the supply chain—and having AI do it takes the burden off staff and increases accuracy.
• Tracking: Some companies are investing in AI that assesses “environmental and geopolitical risks in a supply chain. It scans a firm’s messy and often global web of suppliers for threats like drought in coffee-growing regions or wars disrupting trade routes.”
• Delivery optimization: Using AI, manufacturers are figuring out how to make the delivery of their goods more efficient, resulting in faster order processing and reduced emissions.