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| CSIRO | SOLVE | Issue 1 Nov 04 | |
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MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Software for cellar to seller
By Patricia Howard
CSIRO is working with a leading Australian wine producer to develop innovative decision-support technologies for its supply network. The Orlando Wyndham Group is adding cutting-edge mathematics – embedded into powerful new software – to the business of wine-making in a move to grow its operational capacity and global competitiveness. The wine company is employing these revolutionary software tools to collect, analyse and process the myriad of information streams that feed into key production decisions.
The intention is to eliminate wastage and delays, and to maximise opportunities by having every facet of the supply chain – from vineyard management through to grape delivery through to wine making – managed holistically and collaboratively. This should mean that significantly less time and money will be lost through waste, or poor decisions caused by inadequate or incomplete information. The system is an example of an adaptive supply network, which enables collaborative planning decisions to be made and implemented adaptively. By taking into account changing circumstances and conditions, supply chain management can be made more efficient, flexible and robust. It also makes decision-making more transparent to all stakeholders in the supply chain. Even the most fundamental decisions such as when to harvest grapes are affected by many complex variables such as weather, production schedules and transport availability. In turn these decisions have impacts on all the participants in a supply chain. The system manages all these inputs to ensure the supply chain operates with maximum efficiency. Dr Mohan Krishnamoorthy, a senior research leader with CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, describes the technology used to develop the new supply-chain management system for Orlando Wyndham as state-of-the-art in terms of computer 'intelligence'. He says it is a pointer to the future: “Supply chains will become much more collaborative than they are today,” he says. This is because the technology will make the way information is obtained and the way decisions are made by many stakeholders and supply partners much more “harmonious”. Dr Krishnamoorthy says it will make the decisionmaking that drives supply-chain management more transparent to and better understood by those involved and enable businesses to cope more effectively with the naturally chaotic nature of supply networks. The supply-chain management sector has become an increasingly important presence during the past decade, spurred on by the development of the internet and advances in computer tracking technology (such as Radio Frequency Identification technology). The sector accounts for about 10 per cent of Australia’s Gross Domestic product (GDP), while in other developed countries it accounts for as much as 14 percent. The change implemented by the Orlando Wyndham Group is one example of what can be achieved by adopting an adaptive, collaborative model of information sharing and decision making, but similar advances have also been made in the dairy and automotive industries. However, almost every industry is expected to eventually take advantage of technologies like this. At Orlando Wyndham, the application of the technology has concentrated on finding where value is created, and potentially lost, within the supply network. Consequently, the system targets the decision-making and the level of decision harmony that effects these fundamental areas. The simple, practical outcome is a far more efficient handling and movement of materials – particularly between vineyard and winery during harvest. Russell Johnstone, Group Technical Manager, Viticulture and Winemaking for the Orlando Wyndham Group, says viticulture and winemaking are based on a complex supply network, making the successful management of raw materials not only crucial to the growth of the enterprise, but also to the continuous improvement of the company’s wine. “The seasonal nature of winemaking and the diverse range of participants in this process are distinctive to us, but the work we are doing with CSIRO will benefit all our partners in the supply network,” he says. At the heart of the system developed for Orlando Wyndham is the new software that can sort through many combinations of options and determine the most effective course of action. Dr Simon Dunstall, leader of the Adaptive Supply Networks research team in CSIRO, explains it this way: “In the wine industry, it can be a very arbitrary decision as to when to harvest the grapes. It might be next Monday or it might be next Wednesday. The final decision will have enormous ramifications for everyone involved in the winemaking process, but the person making this decision may only be aware of small number of these factors. “The software, however, can be designed to take all these factors into account and sort through the more routine information, freeing the person making the decision to focus on areas needing much more intuitive decision making skills,” he says. For further information contact:
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In effect,
working with researchers from CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences,
it is reinventing
the way a supply chain is managed. The approach is to replace the conventional,
linear-relationship supply chain with a more collaborative approach. 
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