The first-ever American Feed Industry Association Information Technology Innovation Award has been given to Novus International Inc. for the company's work on a patented remote monitoring system known as AIMS.
This system provided improved inventory management of Novus’ bulk liquid ingredients via a telecommunications system, and in 2009-2010 Novus upgraded the AIMS infrastructure by incorporating the latest satellite communications and remote monitoring technology throughout its bulk liquid product supply chain. The new platform is Internet-based and provides precise, dependable and instantaneous inventory readings for any customer 24/7, and has been implemented at over 500 locations across North America.
The 2011 award runner-up, Feed Energy Company, has developed a computational-based stochastic model, the Nth Load, to help the company in decision making and optimization of inventory management for ingredient procurement, processing and finished goods inventories. The model is run weekly using historical and current data from Feed Energy’s three locations in a five-week planning horizon.
