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.

The company previewed the product at the 2022 Animal AgTech and World Agri-Tech Innovation Summits in San Francisco, pre-registering users for a staggered roll-out that will take place over the next 90 days. They showed more than 25 use case examples, including traditional staples such as inbound and outbound logistics, supply and demand planning, and network optimization (opening or consolidating facilities), along with some more unusual problems such as managing mycotoxins in animal feed, optimizing ingredient choice to make products more sustainable, livestock grading, and agriculture fleet management.

"We are incredibly excited to launch the SWARM Challenge Modeler as we believe it fills a massive gap in the market. For the first time, business users can clearly define the problem they wish to solve and understand the potential ROI before they invest significant time and money chasing a solution that may not fit,” said Anthony Howcroft, chief executive officer of SWARM. "We feel so strongly about how this can improve key processes for everyone's benefit that we decided to make the personal edition of the tool free to use for individuals, and they can even invite colleagues to help them define their challenge."

While the initial launch will showcase templates that are matched to solutions specifically offered by the SWARM platform, Howcroft made it clear that the platform is open and SWARM will soon launch a service that allows other vendors to offer their solutions through the same mechanism.

"Our goal is to help people efficiently solve their biggest challenges, wherever the source of the solution. We believe in separating the definition of the problem from the delivery of the solution, as this will ultimately help us bring powerful AI and operational research approaches to more people," he said.

Aaron Magenheim, CEO and founder of AgTech Insight, a global, full-spectrum Agriculture & Tech consulting firm, commented: "Given the ongoing global disruption and transformation in the food and ag industry, we can no longer make decisions based on past experiences and a ‘gut feeling’ but instead must use good data, analytics, and optimization tools to make data-driven decisions."

He continued, "We have connected SWARM to experts across the industry to identify huge optimization opportunities from animal feed mycotoxin risk through agronomy recommendations leveraging their Challenge Modeler templates as their tool was under development. This new approach is essential in helping organizations much more rapidly identify and deploy relevant solutions to their most pressing business challenges."

The rollout of the SWARM Challenge Modeler will occur in phases over the next 90 days allowing users to explore the initial library of challenge templates, and the software tool.