Savings through AI-based pooling

Sometimes, the number and the variance of components in companies is unimaginably high. People can keep track of a few hundred items ... but 70,000?

A thing of impossibility. It takes machines and algorithms to become “master of the articles”. We supported a company in special machine construction to automatically bundle 70,000 articles.

The goals of the project:

• Identify savings through the consolidation of articles
• Automated pooling of articles to achieve better prices on the market
• Optimization of the purchasing strategy to achieve better prices on the market
• Identify the most suitable suppliers for specific article characteristics

Fully automatic pooling of 70,000 items

Companies with customer-specific constructions often has a higher variance of items, than companies with standard products. The efforts towards modularization do exist ... but it is often argued: “We are special machine builders ... it is not possible to reduce the variance of articles”. Well. With the use of Artificial Intelligence, that argument no longer counts. Today, algorithms take over the classification of articles - and ensure that new articles can be avoided. So the first question was: How many absolutely identical components are there in the entire range of articles? By identical, we mean: 100% identical in terms of production technology. In other words, the same coating, the same tolerances ... 100% identical. The result: out of the 70,000 articles, we were able to identify 980 identical articles in terms of production technology. THE CONCLUSION: 490 articles can be made inactive in the ERP system. Of course, this is not as easy as it sounds. Compatibilities, stock levels and many other clarifications have to be made. Nevertheless, the savings are substantial: EUR 480,000. Lets start with the AI-based pooling.

Fully automatic pooling of thousands of items

Algorithms ensure, that the bundling of similar articles is fully automated. To ensure, that new articles can be avoided in future, our customer naturally uses the CostChecker. The CostChecker shows similar articles directly in the 3D CAD - whereby the similarity can of course be set very specifically. The possibility of automatically bundling thousands of items already saves our customers 6-digit amounts. This does not include the time saved by automated bundling. Data - and AI-Driven Procurement is changing things for our customers.

Ability to use the data systematically

The systematic use of a company's own data is a central point for companies to strengthen their competitiveness. For this reason, the next step is to implement the product data intelligence LUMINARITY.AI - so that your own data systematically contributes to strengthening your competitiveness. When will you start using company data systematically?