Bimbo Bakeries USA uses AI-powered forecasting to minimize waste
With software by Zebra Technologies, the producer reportedly improved forecasts by 30%.
Zebra Technologies Corp., a digital solution provider aimed at helping businesses to intelligently connect data, assets, and people, has announced Bimbo Bakeries USA is using antuit.ai—now part of Zebra Technologies—to transform its organization by improving order accuracy and team visibility, ultimately increasing customer satisfaction. With the Zebra antuit.ai Predictive Ordering for Direct Store Delivery (DSD) solution, Bimbo Bakeries USA has also minimized waste by reducing forecast errors up to 30% as well as achieving and maintaining forecast efficiency of over 80% for more than five years—including through the pandemic.
Operating 59 bakeries and employing over 20,000 associates, Bimbo Bakeries USA engaged Zebra to leverage the antuit.ai solution to maintain the balance between product freshness and availability. The solution is also simplifying collaboration between planners and route operators. Moreover, antuit.ai has enabled Bimbo Bakeries USA to work in a new way, resulting in a “Perfect Order” solution that has minimized forecast errors—overstocking and understocking—and provided the company with better worker productivity.
“Zebra is the perfect collaborator for the complex and sizeable challenges we’re facing through our transformation,” says Morgan Smith, vice president of the Direct Store Delivery Center of Excellence for Bimbo Bakeries USA. “Their antuit.ai forecasting and planning solution, augmented by a custom-fit user interface and deep industry expertise, enables us to achieve a significant step-change in both our order accuracy and organizational productivity. And the best part is that we did not have to wait years to feel the business impact.”
Stock availability and ordering continue to challenge retailers with nearly 90% of retail decision-makers and associates agreeing these are the top areas to improve with technology, according to Zebra’s Global Shopper Study. Antuit.ai reportedly optimizes demand forecasting and planning, allocation, replenishment, and lifecycle pricing for retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Its software enables inventory decisions with demand intelligence leveraging both internal and external data, including weather and local events, to make more accurate, granular forecasts and provide better inventory decision-making power to businesses, like Bimbo Bakeries USA.
“I’m especially proud of the success antuit.ai has helped Bimbo Bakeries USA realize,” says Sivakumar Lakshmanan, head of software solutions at Zebra Technologies. “We have collaborated together to embark on a new way of working—augmenting human know-how with AI—to solve the company’s forecasting challenges, empowering them to digitally transform their business and achieve substantial results.”
Grupo Bimbo S.A.B. de C.V. is on the current Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery “Top 50 Snack & Bakery Companies” list. Click here to view the current “Top 50” rankings.
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