Noodle.ai | Make Profit Not Waste | Stephen Pratt

Noodle.ai has a clear mission: to create a world without waste. With today’s unprecedented supply chain crisis, in which “normal” conditions no longer exist, companies’ systems of record and systems of planning alone cannot keep pace. Noodle.ai has responded by creating a supply chain system of intelligence, optimized to enable companies to navigate the highly dynamic “post-normal” environment. Noodle.ai’s Enterprise AI® tilts the odds in your favor by helping you understand probabilities, allowing you to make risk-adjusted decisions with confidence in the likelihood of successful outcomes. With Noodle.ai, companies are consistently making decisions that are most likely to have positive outcomes and better financial impact.

Making Stuff Means Making Bets

Supply chain leaders know the supply chain volatility the last few years have brought, and they also know they’re constantly gambling and placing bets that create waste. The conflict in Ukraine has severely increased the scarcity of wheat and fertilizer, increasing agricultural yields. This increases the raw material cost for food companies. Coupled with the pervasive challenge of inventory overage across industries in the post-COVID world, companies have experienced margin erosion. Noodle.ai helps mitigate this by reducing spending on raw materials through a more accurate and less biased demand forecast. Noodle.ai also increases the financial return on raw material purchases by recommending inventory redeployments that minimize obsolescence.

More broadly, the pandemic and increasing protectionism (i.e., tariffs) have motivated supply chain network reconfigurations. New supply chain configurations bring more uncertainty in supply behaviors (e.g., production outputs, actual lead times). By deploying the power of probabilities, Noodle.ai solutions quickly learn these behaviors, increasing the odds of making better inventory bets. The company’s Supply Chain product offers dramatically improved operator effectiveness in supply chains and manufacturing in order to create a world without waste.

Noodle is a System of Intelligence that enhances supply chain planning systems with the power of probabilities to improve a company’s decision-making process. Unlike traditional systems that rely on fixed rules and deterministic math, Noodle.ai’s advanced AI engines accurately predict the supply and demand of products across the supply chain network, helping customers identify inventory imbalances across their supply chain and make informed decisions to mitigate financial and operational risks. Noodle.ai’s probabilistic recommendations modify supply plans to resolve imbalances and provide detailed explanations for complete clarity and transparency. By doing so, they drastically reduce waste, elevate service levels, ensure maximum efficiency, and improve financial outcomes.

The Power of Probabilities

Noodle.ai is at the forefront of supply chain innovation, pioneering the transition from integrated to probabilistic and autonomous planning. Bolstered by over $100M in investment, their purpose-built AI solution has been tested and proven in numerous global deployments for Fortune 100 companies. Their unique approach is a seamless enhancement to existing supply chain systems, introducing the next generation of capabilities in a shorter timeframe and at a fraction of the cost of traditional planning systems s. Noodle.ai completely reimagines supply chain processes with AI, delivering a comprehensive, efficient, and uniquely optimized supply chain solution that positions themselves distinctively in the competitive landscape.

Noodle.ai’s technology revolutionizes traditional planning systems by focusing on managing uncertainty through probabilistic planning. Traditional systems, limited by fixed rules, often struggle with execution due to their inability to adapt to changes. Their solution fills this gap with two primary components: Prediction Engines and Corrective Engines. The Prediction Engines utilize curated AI techniques to incorporate probabilities in both demand and supply planning. On the demand side, their technology generates accurate demand signals for the short-term execution horizon (0-13 weeks) by synthesizing internal and external data. For supply, their AI predicts the quantity and lead time for all planned supply transactions, including purchasing, production, and distribution. These enhanced predictions enable effective risk identification.

Noodle’s corrective engine employs generative AI techniques to account for network complexities, preferred actions, and tribal knowledge. Noodle.ai uses Graph Neural Networks (GNN) to accurately model complex networks and their relationships. Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) then generates action policies to identify value-optimizing actions. In contrast to traditional APS systems, which struggle with scalability, this technology is a cloud-native application enabling high-speed computations and large-scale application of advanced techniques.

Big Gains with Better Bets

In one instance, a Fortune 500 global CPG company faced challenges with decentralized planning across 80+ countries, each having distinct demand drivers and forecasting requirements. To address this, they implemented Noodle.ai for Demand, designed to unify forecasting methods across markets.

Beginning with a pilot in 5 countries on 3 continents, this solution harnessed local sales data and market-specific demand drivers for precise forecasting.  The benefits were notable: Noodle.ai’s system and predictions exceeded the company’s baseline by over 10 points wMAPE and reduced forecasting bias from 20% to low single digits. Demand planners also gained deeper insights into market dynamics. The client’s main challenge was the diverse market drivers, but Noodle.ai’s phased approach facilitated effective integration. Based on the success of the pilot, the company expanded the reach of Noodle.ai to all countries with commercial activity.

Above is just one of many instances that describe the efficiency and technology of the company. Noodle.ai’s near-term roadmap focuses on expanding its product offerings while continuously evolving its existing demand and distribution modules. Its development pipeline includes production and materials modules, with future plans to extend into inventory and allocation planning. Their pioneering approach to probabilistic planning, risk identification, and generative action recommendations will continue to underpin these enhancements. “Already recognized for global deployments, we will maintain and expand our presence and continue providing uniquely optimized AI solutions to an even broader range of clients and industries,” adds Stephen.