ML & AI use cases in Food Industry & Accommodation

How Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing Food Processing Business?

Artificial Intelligence is catching the attention of businesses across many disciplines and sectors with Food Processing and Handling (FP&H) being one of them.

AI is impacting the FP&H industry both directly and indirectly. For example, Indirectly, it helps farmers with weather prediction, which will help farmers to produce high-quality raw material for food processing companies, helping them to save bucks on sorting a product. AI also?helps transportation companies?in reducing the shipping cost, making food processing companies pay lesser for transportation. Either way, it is helping FP&H companies to save revenue.

However, looking at the direct benefits of AI, it helps FP&H sector in five significant applications which are,

1. Sorting Packages and Products
2. Food Safety Compliance
3. Maintaining Cleanliness
4. Developing Products
5. Helping Customers with Decision Making

Applications of AI in Food Processing and Handling

Food processing is a complicated business. It involves sorting the food or raw materials coming from the farm, maintaining the machinery and several types of equipment, and more. At the end, when the final product is ready to ship, humans check the quality of a product and decide whether or not it is ready to ship. However, in many food processing units, this process is automated by AI. Below are the top 5 applications of AI which directly impacts the food processing companies and help them to increase their revenue and boost customer experience.

1. Sorting Packages and Products

The first operational challenge that food processing companies face is sorting of feedstock. Every potato, tomato, orange, and apple is different, and hence, it requires rigorous sorting because every food processing company has to maintain a certain quality to stay in the competition. If not automated through AI and other emerging technologies such as IoT, this process requires an enormous amount of human labor.

According to?TOMRA, a leading sorting and collection solutions provider in Norway, 90% of the food was being sorted by humans until the end of the 20th century. Unlike other food sorting machines which only sort poor quality fruits and veggies from the good ones, TOMRA is using X-ray, NIR (Near Infra-Red) spectroscopy, LASER, cameras and a unique machine-learning algorithm to analyze different aspects of a fruit or a vegetable for sorting.

Kewpie?Corporation, a Japanese food processing company, created an AI-based TensorFlow machine to?identify the anomalies?present in food coming from farms. Corporations like TORMA and Kewpie are helping food processing companies not only to increase their revenue but also to improve their yields.

2. Food Safety Compliance

Safety is a massive concern in the food processing business. Even the smallest contamination is food can Factories have started to implement AI-based cameras to detect whether an employee is wearing a proper costume or not. However, it is a large scale implementation of what Shanghai municipal health agency implemented in the restaurants of Shanghai. In collaboration with?Remark Holding, the agency implemented?AI-enabled cameras?at more than 200 restaurants and are planning to expand to more than 2000 restaurants.

The AI-enabled cameras helped restaurant managers to keep a watch on the restaurant workers as to whether or not they are wearing proper food protection gears as per food safety regulations. It helps them to detect any indiscipline in real-time.

3. Maintaining Cleanliness

Maintaining cleanliness is a massive concern in food factories. Many companies claim to be as clean as ice because their every process automated and untouched by human hands. What if the machines and pieces of equipment are contaminated? Customers have also become intelligent, and they know that having every process automated does not mean the product will be safe to eat. They need more proof.

According to the University of Nottingham, equipment cleaning accounts for almost 30% of energy and water supplies of a food processing plant.?They claim?that their AI-based sensor technology is capable of saving nearly $133 million per year and also save time (by 50%), energy, and water to clean the equipment.

Traditional cleaning systems didn’t include any sensors which resulted in residual of food particle in vessels of equipment. The system was unable to clean small food particles which the new self-optimizing cleaning system could. It uses optical fluorescence imaging and ultrasonic sensing technologies to deliver data to the Machine Learning algorithm, which will help to monitor the microbial debris and food particles in the equipment.

4. Developing Products

The food processing industry is unique in its way as there are so many products a single company can provide. For example, Beverage giant Coca-Cola has?bought more than 500 brands and offer more than 3500 types of drinks?to its customers. But, the question arises that how does the company decide which flavor to create next? Before AI, the brand conducted surveys and campaigns to identify what their customers want.

Currently, Coca-Cola has kept several self-serving soda fountains which allow customers to create their customized drink by mixing a variety of beverages which Coca-Cola offers. Thousands of such fountains were laid out across the entire USA. Hundreds of customers used each of these fountains to create their personalized drinks. Using AI, they analyzed and identified that a majority of customers mixed cherry-flavored soda with sprite. This data helped Coca-Cola to come up with their new product,?Cherry Sprite.

5. Assisting customers with Decision Making

Similar to Food processing companies, AI also helps its customers to make a better purchase decision. Food manufacturing giant Kellogg’s launched?Bear Naked Custom, which allowed customers to create their personalized granola with the help of more than 50 ingredients. The system used IBM’s Chef Watson to store thousands of possible recipes and feed them to an AI algorithm which helped customers to identify whether or not the ingredients will taste good together.

This system not only helped clients to create their small personalized batches of granola but also helped the company to identify what should be their next line of product, similar to Coca-Cola.

AI IN HOTEL INDUSTRY (ACCOMODATION)

Did you know that “94%?(of C-level executives)?reported?that artificial intelligence would ‘substantially transform’ their companies within five years, most believing the transformation would occur by 2020”? Their predictions were correct. Today, most hotels use AI-powered websites, booking tools, or other software.?

However,?49% of survey respondents?say that the hotel industry ranks right in the middle at a grade of “C” for artificial intelligence implementation. The good news is that there is a lot of room to grow in this category.?

1. Offer AI concierges

Hotels such as?the Radisson Blu Edwardian in London and Manchester?use artificial intelligence?concierges to check guests in or out, order room service, and answer questions 24/7. The best part? Guests can text Edward (their concierge) right from their phones. Consider?chatbots for your hotel?if you’d like to create consistent guest experiences and free up time for front desk staff to provide the best possible service for guests who are physically present.?

2. Switch to hyperdynamic pricing?

Hyperdynamic pricing?allows booking engines to automatically search social media, past user data, and even world news to display rates that maximize earning potential. For example, if there is a large conference filling up hotels nearby, the artificially intelligent software will instantly adjust prices to reflect the increase in demand.?

Aviation industry expert and travel consultant Matthew Klint, who notes that this software is already quite common among airlines, says “on the horizon are systems that can decipher so-called ‘unstructured data’ that includes scanning?hotel reviews?for consumer sentiment or pinpointing seat assignments or particular hotel rooms based upon Instagram photos.” In other words, this technology will get better and better over time, so keep a close eye on it.

3. Predict utilities usage

Improve?revenue management?and help?save the environment?with energy, water, and waste-monitoring tools. Hotels such as Hilton?have been using them for a decade,?with no sign of going back. According to the recent celebration of their own sustainability and social impact efforts: “Hilton properties have reduced carbon emissions equivalent to removing 390,350 cars from the road ... while saving over $1 billion in utility costs” all through their proprietary LightStay program. In other words, brands that?develop or adopt programs like this can expect to reap savings and sustainability rewards from them long term.?

4. Adopt group booking software

Cvent Passkey for Hoteliers?uses?smart technology?to maximize the sales potential of existing business, improve the booking experience, and seamlessly organize all related departments. Portola Hotel & Spa Revenue Manager?Colette Barss says?that "since enabling Passkey ARI we have seen significant room revenue growth with our guests extending their stays. Planners appreciate being able to keep links open longer, and guests like the ease of booking."?

All of the available?tools add up to create a powerful booking engine but, at the end of the day, it all supports the same goal. As Barss says, “It’s simple?—?we want to fill out blocks.” To do that, hoteliers need a group booking software that helps them work better and smarter.?

5. Make reviews actionable?

Get to know your customers through the feedback they leave on major hotel review sites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor. But instead of always?going through the process manually, use an intelligent tool to do it for you.?Machine learning?(a subset of AI) makes it easy to automatically collect, store, and analyze data from across a variety of online sources.?

This is why luxury hotel brand?Dorchester Collections?uses it to personalize guest experiences from booking to dining. In one instance, they were able to identify “that guests were far more interested in breakfast than dinner as a meal, to which hotels tend to focus their investments on in order to differentiate themselves by offering a fine dining experience."?The result? An updated breakfast menu that guests could personalize themselves.?

"It turned out (the machine learning software)?was right,” says Dorchester Collection's Ana Brant. “Dorchester kitchens reported that somewhere between 80 and 90% of breakfast orders are modified. So today, when you sit down to breakfast at the Beverly Hills Hotel (which has 1,019 reviews on TripAdvisor, 298 on Booking.com, 235 on Yelp, and 294 on Expedia), a waiter comes up to you and asks what you want — they've got everything. No menu."

6. Use chatbot translators

Chatbot translators can quickly identify languages used by website visitors based on their location. They can also translate scripts on the fly and manage simultaneous guest inquiries from all over the world. Tools such as?Bebot?go a step further and enhance guest experience through automated guest review collection, onsite restaurant renovations, and booking confirmations.?

Although the hospitality industry is no stranger to chatbots, their importance will only continue to increase. As?The New York Times?reports, a chatbot “offers travelers updated information about coronavirus outbreaks, statistics and symptoms.” Thanks to AI, guests will increasingly view chatbots as travel assistants rather than obstacles between them and a live representative.