Development of an Innovative Autonomous & Intelligent Demand Management Tool (AIDMT) for Refrigerated and Shelf-Life Constrained Food Supply Chains

Within refrigerated and shelf-life constrained food supply chains extremely high levels of demand fluctuations arise preventing organisations achieving the high levels of customer service required by large retail customers whilst ensuring high levels of waste are not produced. In order to resolve these problems more effective management of demand is required from procurement of basic materials by processers and manufacturers through to distribution of finished goods to retail customers. To achieve this aim this project will develop a novel Autonomous & Intelligent Demand Management (AIDMT) approach by structuring the causal and planning relationships between retail demand forecasts, production schedules and capacity plans as autonomous control networks. These networks will be constructured using the basic principles of gene transcription regulatory control that when applied to demand management enable fast and flexible responses to demand fluctuations.