BinSentry, a leading ag-tech company developing artificial-intelligence (AI) tools for animal feed supply chain efficiency and sustainability, today announced Critical Event Management (CEM) – a new software add-on to their leading feed inventory management platform.
Out-of-feed events negatively impact the health and performance of swine and poultry—and squeeze producers’ already-thin profit margins. But these outages often go undetected and untracked.
Unknown to most producers, 80% of out-of-feed outage hours are caused by bin slide management errors, as opposed to running out of feed on-site. These insights, discovered by the BinSentry platform that monitors tens of thousands of feed bins daily, create new urgency around the need to manage feed bins more effectively.
CEM is a new BinSentry add-on feature that allows producers and mill operators to see and manage slide management issues at any time, from anywhere.
“Out-of-feed events can happen at any time, for all kinds of reasons. Whatever the cause, a timely response is critical. Before BinSentry, that wasn’t possible because we didn’t have any visibility into what’s happening inside those bins,” said BinSentry CEO Ben Allen. “But now we do.”
Deploying AI to automate and optimize vital processes and supply chains is the new frontier in agriculture. BinSentry uses AI to enhance process control, prevent waste, lower transportation costs, protect workers, and improve animal health and performance, said Elizabeth Willard, BinSentry Director of Product.
“The CEM software add-on gives our customers real-time alerts and a direct line to their on-site teams so they can respond immediately to out-of-feed events or other feed issues in their facilities, and it does it through SMS text,” explains Willard. “This means that there is no need for apps to be downloaded on employee phones, and almost zero training required. The industry works through texting, and now, so do we.”
In addition to real-time alerts via SMS text, CEM tracks event time, duration, and whether employees have responded to the event.
Equipped with CEM and BinSentry’s Out-of-Feed Insights reporting dashboard, users can track out-of-feed events over time and compare across farms. This allows producers to make data-based decisions about feed management throughout their operations that will:
- Improve feed conversion ratios (FCR) by up to 10 basis points
- Avoid emergency feed deliveries
- Ensure their animals get to market on time and in prime condition
“Animal feed represents about two-thirds of the total cost of food production, so obviously anything we can do to improve FCR is going to help producers,” Allen said. “Improving feed management also helps feed mills and distributors become more efficient and profitable, lowering their costs by delivering the right feed mixes at the right time while putting fewer trucks and fuller trucks on the road.”
For more information about BinSentry’s Critical Event Management software and how it can enhance feed supply chain efficiency, visit BinSentry’s website.
