Infor®, a cloud technology specialist specialized in every industrial sector, announces that Amalthea, one of the world’s leading suppliers of organic goat and cow cheese, has decided to rely on Infor’s integrated artificial intelligence (IA) solution to increase its profitability. and the quality of its cheeses in order to retain its customers and strengthen its sustainability initiatives.
Every time production increases by 1%, Amalthea intends to save 500,000 euros to reinvest in the development of its activities. Amalthea also plans to significantly increase its production capacity over the next five years to meet strong demand for cheese varieties as well as innovative products such as the CleardMilk® formula, a process that extracts whey, cream and other components from cheese. raw milk. All of these initiatives reduce waste while improving sustainability practices.
Based in the Netherlands, Amalthea strives to make the most of the highest quality goat milk it receives from its approximately 50 farmers who are members of the Amalthea Goat Breeders’ Cooperative. Its mission is to improve the lives of consumers, customers and farmers by producing delicious and nutritious dairy products in a sustainable manner while harnessing the richness of goat and cow milk.
One of the biggest problems for dairy producers like Amalthea is that the composition of milk varies between farmers and seasons. Therefore, there is no standard recipe that can be applied to all batches of milk to achieve consistent quality and volume. Therefore, strict control and management of manufacturing processes is essential to ensure the stability of the product, so that customers remain loyal to it, and so that Amalthea can optimize its production performance.
“Our customers demand consistency in the cheese products we make,” says Joris Aarts, CFO of Amalthea. “The big problem is that milk, which is the raw material for cheese production, is inherently very unstable and uneven depending on the season. Infor Coleman AI helps us predict and stabilize production volume and quality as much as possible to keep our customers happy. »
Previously, for each batch of cheese, Amalthea set a target yield based on actual or historical production data. When a batch of cheese did not meet the target yield, or the best target yield was not determined, industrial operators had to take action and make changes to production in order to optimize their processes. Production problems were then manually identified and analyzed weekly. Around 240,000 liters of milk were produced daily, so it was difficult to wait a week or even a month to receive information and make the necessary changes to the system to increase milk yields.
“We used to be able to do these yield calculations entirely by hand. And we could only do it once a week or even once a month, so it’s too late,” says Joris Aarts. “In addition, we could not calculate the exit per game. We could certainly increase milk yields a little, but now, thanks to Infor Coleman’s artificial intelligence, we can not only know the yield per batch of cheese in real time, but also have a direct idea of the factors that increase or decrease milk yield. . So now operators can directly influence these factors to influence our production volume. »
In 2020, Amalthea decided to modernize its ERP system with Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage. The company was able to harness the power of Infor’s cloud technology platform, Infor OS, to address critical performance issues for its dairy products. Previously, this problem was difficult to solve due to outdated and disabled applications, disparate data, and lack of time and resources. The modernization laid down the necessary elements for the rapid and efficient creation of applications based on AI. Detection and understanding of yield deviations with the help of Amalthea artificial intelligence is now fully automated, from data collection and processing to data recovery.
Amalthea uses Infor CloudSuite Food & Beverage to manage its entire supply chain, from milk to cheese storage. The solution interacts with the plant’s production systems, such as weighing devices and process vessels, and facilitates their automation. Infor technologies have also helped Amalthea increase the speed and efficiency of closing financial deals from weeks to days. According to Joris Aarts, the fact that the company is now running in the cloud provides a basis for the growth of its business, as data plays an increasingly important role in dairy production.
“Infor has a catalog of dairy-specific processes that gives us a great idea of milk usage and milk yield,” continues Joris Aarts. “This instruction manual is the most efficient way to manage costs, and thanks to Infor we have already achieved savings. »
He concludes: “Now, with the introduction of artificial intelligence from Infor Coleman, we can go even further with more real-time data and information. »