Page 32 - Food&Drink July 2019

MATERIALS HANDLING & LOGISTICS
Using AI complexity to build cohesion
Jacob’s Creek flies the Australian flag in Pernod Ricard Winemakers stable of fine wines.
International wine powerhouse Pernod Ricard Winemakers has paired with South Australian based company Complexica, an artificial intelligence software specialist,
to digitise and globally optimise its supply chain. Kim Berry talked to global operations director
Brett McKinnon about Pernod Ricard’s hopes from the project.
✷ CHANGING TIMES INNOVATIVE
ADVANCES
Brett McKinnon is a a winemaker by trade who has worked with Pernod Ricard for more than 20 years. When he began, innovation was “pretty basic” – maybe a slight variation on a grape variety. Today, he says, “all sorts of things are happening. Now we’re really pushing boundaries on what is wine, there is a real blurring of categories in the sector. Innovation has come a long way”.
The technology available to us has also dramatically changed in 20 years, he says. Some of the equipment has come from other industries and been applied to wine making with “really big benefits”.
“AI is going to infiltrate everything, from bottling, logistics and warehouse back out to the vineyard.
“Whether it is drone technology or self-guided vehicles, the data collected means you understand the vineyard better and can manage it more effectively.
It gives you a lot more evidence, more data, to support the decisions you make as a winemaker. You make a far better wine because of that.”
PERNOD Ricard Winemakers (PRW) is the premium wine division of Pernod Ricard, with a portfolio spanning Jacob’s Creek in Australia, Brancott Estate (New Zealand), Campo Viejo (Spain) and Kenwood Vineyards and Mumm Napa (California).
For the group’s global operations director Brett McKinnon, its AI Foundations project will provide artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities to various supply chain and production functions within the company.
It will transition operations “away from paper, whiteboard and spreadsheet-based systems” to Complexica’s cloud-based applications for planning, scheduling and push/pull optimisation, he says.
It is about improving, optimising and developing operations right across the
value chain. Instead of looking at department by department, it will look to what is best for
the business as a whole, McKinnon says.
The company had been looking for a logistics solution “for some time”. It was an overall uptick in AI capabilities that meant “we
had to really ramp up the solutions we had”.
Complexica CEO Matt Michalewicz says optimising supply chain decisions across multiple operating sites and time zones is “difficult and complex”, but doing so can drive “significant benefits” for business.
Asset utilisation, volume throughput, consistent quality and working capital requirements are some of the areas to benefit, he says.
It is not Complexica’s first foray into the food and beverage space, also working with Liquor Marketing Group, Australian Liquor Marketers, Treasury Wine Estates, CostaGroup and PFD Food Services.
McKinnon says Complexica offered “global thought leadership” on applied AI, particularly in areas of global optimisation and multi- objective optimisation.
It also had “a deep appreciation of winemaking production processes and the inherent complexities that exist within supply chains”.
GREATER COHESION, FEWER SILOS
For McKinnon, one of the big steps forward will be building cohesion across all the operations.
“We operate in four different countries with four businesses operating in different ways with different systems, people and cultures, while trying to find that cohesion, efficiency and better planning.
“Wine is very regional. You need to respect regional differences and the wine styles consumers expect from those regions. Pernod Ricard is making wines from four different parts of the world, but, we’re also all making the same product,” McKinnon says.
McKinnon acknowledges some business units will have bigger adjustments than others, “but the outcome for the whole business is that everyone starts thinking less departmentally and more holistically.”
For McKinnon, optimising and improving systems
on a whole enterprise approach is “where the big benefits come from”.
“There’s no doubt, there are different levels of maturity in some parts of the business to others, so some will benefit a bit more than others.”
“It’s quite a shift forward,” he says. For McKinnon, learning from each other is a key component of the new AI Foundations project. ✷
32 | Food&Drink business | July 2019 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au