Making environment friendly and cost-efficient supply chains a reality, Blue Yonder’s AI-powered logistics platform – Luminate Control Tower – is enabling businesses to deliver the right product at the right place and at the right time while reducing their carbon footprint. Luminate Control Tower is an AI-powered supply chain logistics platform built on Microsoft Azure which helps organizations have a positive environmental impact as well as save costs. Abiding by the philosophy that – ‘a better supply chain means a better planet’ –the platform optimizes transportation routes that directly impact the fuel costs, carbon credits, and other related sustainability objectives. The platform identifies and resolves potential disruptions with delayed deliveries and increase in carbon emissions to company supply chains.

LuminateControl Tower uses Microsoft Azure to help customers gain better visibility of their supply chain, and identify untapped opportunities for businesses. It does so by considering past sales trends, conducting competitor analysis, and analyzing overall economic impact of factors such as local festivals or a global pandemic—anything that can impact supply, manufacturing, or demand.

“Our goal is to help our customers save US$100 billion worth of value from savings and efficiency by 2025. Azure’s built-in tools enable us to process huge amounts of data in a short timeframe and we’re leveraging those services to be able to quickly run scenarios and come back with outputs. With Azure, we were able to help our customers create what-if scenarios and take informed decisions during unprecedented events like COVID-19 pandemic and the Suez Canal blockage and deliver real-time visibility into the supply chains of high-priority clients.” said Vishal Dhawan, group vice president, Asia Pacific, Blue Yonder.

Many organizations turned to Blue Yonder for solutions during COVID-19 to help with global supply chain disruptions, which caused an acute shortage of several products globally. Using Microsoft Azure, Blue Yonder enabled businesses to prepare alternate plans of production, storage, and distribution, thereby minimizing the impact of lockdowns and other restrictions. During the lockdowns, trucks carrying raw material and final goods could not move about freely. Using Blue Yonder’s  tools, they could get access to real-time information about restrictions and suggestions about alternate routes. Similarly, if a supplier was in a containment zone, their tools suggested alternate suppliers to their customers.

The Suez Canal blockage, earlier this year, was another event that impacted logistics and supply chains around the world. During the blockage, Blue Yonder was tracking over 200 containers with US$ 500 million worth of products on 30-odd vessels. With the world’s most vital shipping route blocked for nearly a week, Blue Yonder set up a cross functional team to actively monitor the situation. They gathered this real-time information through several sources or feeds, including daily news, weather updates, sensors installed on containers, and GPS. Using Luminate Control Tower, Blue Yonder was able to predict the arrival date of the customers’ goods at the intended port and notify on delays that customers faced. They were also able to show the impact of the delay on the production capacities, sales, and eventually on the lives of their customers’ customers in real time.

Over 3,000 companies currently use Blue Yonder’s services. The Luminate Control Tower currently offers customers visibility, prediction, and prescriptions for their supply chains. Going forward, the company plans to create autonomous supply chains. Using Luminate Control Tower, Blue Yonder can not only predict and prescribe to their customers ways to build a more robust supply chain, but also helps execute that plan.