Understanding the intricacies and impact of natural and artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming paramount, whatever your industry. The concept of levels of abstraction emerges as a critical framework we all need to know. It provides a compelling lens to explore how consciousness might arise from lower-level processes, hints at when AI might develop general intelligence, and guides collaborative approaches that are easier for humans and AI to comprehend. Learning how it works might also give you a tool to make smarter decisions.

Unleashing a wave of innovation in the agri-food supply chain landscape, SWARM Engineering delivers a trailblazing AI solution, to achieve multi-million-dollar savings on operational processes. At its core lies a cutting-edge Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product, with three core elements.

SWARM’s CEO, Anthony Howcroft, was recently on Modern Acre podcast with Tyler and Tim Nuss. Listen-in as the discuss AI in the agri-food supply chain.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Industrial IoT with Matt Oberdorfer.

Matt is the founder and CEO of Embassy Of Things (EOT), a leading industrial software company dedicated to helping industrial companies improve efficiency, reduce downtime, and increase productivity. EOT's innovative products and services leverage the latest technologies, including AI and machine learning, to deliver real-time insights and enable data-driven decision-making.

IRVINE, Calif., April 11, 2023 — SWARM Engineering is excited to announce the launch of its new Partner Network program to support our growing team of referral partners across the globe.  In addition, we are excited to announce Cesar Infante - a seasoned executive in the Agri-Food Sector, has joined our program.

IRVINE, Calif., March 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- SWARM Engineering is proud to announce AVA, the first AgriFood Virtual Advisor, an AI-powered digital assistant based on OpenAI, Microsoft Azure and SWARM technology, designed to help businesses in agri-food solve operational challenges and save millions of dollars.

You’ve defined the problem, your data is clean and ready, matching it to an appropriate solution is easy, right? You may have the traditional ‘build or buy’ decision to make, but either approach should theoretically be straightforward. Yet statistics show many projects falter at this stage – in 2022 the Standish Group reported that only 4% of new software application projects are successful (with 49% failing outright), and only 30% of software package deployment projects meet with success. All of which suggests there is flaw in the process, which leads to the question of whether there might be a better way to deliver solutions, with a much higher success rate.

If you're curious about what makes a good leader, how diversity, equity, and inclusion play a part in executive search. And what it takes to maintain women in leadership roles. Then we have a great podcast for you today.

You have a clear definition of your problem, you just need to get the data, and then you can start building a solution. Great, your IT department says, we think we can get that for you in about six months. Arghhhh!

There is an alternative, though, the business department already has most of that data, in exports from transactional applications plus home-grown spreadsheets they manage themselves – perhaps you could use that?

When Einstein famously said, “If I had 60 minutes to save the world, I’d spend the first 55 minutes defining the problem, and the next five minutes solving it”, he was sharing hard-won experience. Once you’ve got a clear problem definition, the solution frequently falls into place. But that’s not the whole picture. For one thing, problems aren’t static, and then there are other issues to contend with – such as cleaning and preparing data, or picking the right solution from a panoply of choices.

Last year we posted about the five superpowers SWARM software can deliver to supply chain companies, but there is a sixth power that seems to be in remarkably short supply right now, which is stronger than the others. What is this remarkable power? Luck. 

It feels like EVERYBODY is talking about OpenAI and ChatGPT, even your great aunt will want to discuss it with you at the next family BBQ. Having spent some time using the tool, I would agree that it’s very impressive and completely understand why Microsoft are planning on investing $10 billion in the company.

This has been an exciting year for SWARM, here are some highlights:

Get the SWARM Challenge Modeler - Today!
It's been a delight to finally announce general availability of the SWARM Challenge Modeler, and access to the personal edition is free to all. This tool lets business users easily define and publish their biggest issues, in a standard and repeatable way. It also links directly to our SWARM Solution Engine, for rapid delivery of SaaS solutions. We would encourage you to give it a try here!

New technology trends and capabilities will open up entirely new categories of solutions for SWARM. One software trend that Anthony finds most exciting is Nocode. This has the potential to place powerful algorithms for AI, machine learning (ML), and operational research in the hands of regular people without requiring them to have a math degree or years of software development experience.

Aaron Magenheim co-founder of Grower’s Insight and Anthony Howcroft CEO at SWARM Engineering both talk about the work they do to help organizations optimize, modernize, and digitize business processes.

The key to fostering an optimized agri-food supply chain lies in identifying, defining, and mitigating core operational challenges. The end to-end optimization of the supply chain provides all stakeholders, be it food and beverage manufacturers, producers, or shipping organizations, with an opportunity to not just reduce costs but also unlock greater efficiencies and manage potential risks. Nobody understands this better than SWARM Engineering—a Software-as-a-Service platform that leverages next-gen cognitive AI to optimize the agri-food supply chain.

SWARM Engineering was founded on the concept of what if we could solve problems instead of simply highlighting them? Anthony Howcroft, CEO of SWARM had worked in big data at Microsoft, and seen many companies getting actionable insights into their business but not fully realizing the potential to make dramatic cost savings or boost revenues. “It felt like there was another level of software maturity that companies were missing,” he told us.

SWARM Engineering was founded in Southern California, to see how a multi-agent system could take advantage of the latest AI and IoT developments to solve problems that were common in business, but hard to solve with traditional IT. Challenges like product formulation or blending can involve trillions of potential combinations, as can many common supply-chain processes like supply and demand planning, or logistics.

IRVINE, Calif., April 5, 2022--SWARM Engineering, the software-as-a-service platform that focuses on solving complex challenges in the agri-food supply chain, announced today the launch of the SWARM Challenge Modeler, a unique approach to defining and solving business challenges.

SWARM Challenge Modeler enables people to clearly define a business challenge in the agri-food supply chain and is designed to be simple enough for any businessperson to use. A library of easy-to-use templates, created by industry experts, helps business users rapidly define and understand their challenge, which can then be matched directly to an algorithmic solution in the existing SWARM solution engine.