Global food producer cuts harvest planning time from weeks to minutes
A leading grower uses SWARM to optimize labor and transportation for up to 15,000 field workers in South America, turning a complex monthly planning process into a fast, repeatable workflow.
CUSTOMER
About the customer
This customer is a global, vertically integrated grower, packer, shipper, and marketer of fresh produce. The customer operates across multiple regions, including Peru, Mexico, Morocco, and the USA, supplying premium blueberries, avocados, asparagus, and table grapes to customers year-round from strategically located growing regions.
INDUSTRY
Agrifood
FOCUS
Food production
REGION
North America. South America, Africa
USE CASES
Workforce planning, transportation optimization
CHALLENGE
Coordinating thousands of workers and pickup points
During peak harvest season, the customer relies on up to 15,000 workers in Peru to harvest fresh produce. Each week, the planning team has to decide:
Which workers to hire and where to deploy them, based on prior performance, forecasted yield, and demand
How to move those workers from thousands of pickup points to fields using a mix of SUVs, minibuses, and large coaches
The labor plan and the transportation plan are tightly linked. A change in one affects the other. Before SWARM, building a weekly plan took months of manual work across spreadsheets and disconnected tools.
SOLUTION
AI powered optimization for labor and transportation
The customer uses the SWARM Platform to create monthly labor and transportation plans in a single workflow.
1. Ingest data
The SWARM Platform connects to the customer’s data sources relating to worker performance, labor availability, forecasted yield, customer demand, and transport capacity.
2. Build the labor plan
The SWARM Platform recommends which workers to hire and where to assign them each week, considering prior performance and expected field needs.
3. Optimize transportation
The SWARM Platform then generates a transportation plan that moves workers from thousands of pickup points to field locations using different vehicle types, minimizing transportation costs while meeting timing constraints.
4. Support weekly decisions
Planners review, adjust, and approve the plan inside the SWARM Platform. The optimizations run every week so the team can respond quickly to changes in yield, labor availability, or demand.
POWERED BY SWARM ENGINE
The SWARM ENGINE is our agentic AI optimization product that solves complex operational problems such as labor planning, logistics, and allocation.
IMPACT
From weeks of planning to decisions in minutes
With the SWARM Platform, the customer now:
Generates weekly labor and transportation plans in minutes instead of weeks
Runs two optimizations in production for labor and transport planning
Is piloting AVA Enterprise to extend AI support into day-to-day operational decisions
Has renewed its SWARM engagement for a third year as part of a broader innovation program
“We have worked closely with SWARM in optimizing critical functions in our supply chain, beginning with labor and transportation planning for field workers, and this is part of a broader program to drive innovation in our business. The team have been responsive, supportive, and knowledgeable. We recently kicked off the next wave of projects with SWARM, who we now consider to be a strategic partner.”
— EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCER
WHY SWARM
Why this customer chose SWARM
Operations first approach
SWARM starts from the operational challenge and works back to the data and algorithms, not the other way around.
Fast time to value
The first optimizations went into production quickly and are now part of weekly decision making.
Built for complex agrifood operations
The platform handles real world constraints such as worker performance, pickup locations, vehicle types, and cost tradeoffs.
See what SWARM can do for your operations
Talk with our team about your own labor, transportation, or supply chain planning challenges, and explore how SWARM can help.