o9 Solutions collaborates with IIT Kharagpur and NITIE to drive R&D on AI-ML technologies
Bangalore, February 9th, 2022, – o9 Solutions, a leading enterprise AI software platform provider for transforming planning and decision-making, has today announced its collaboration with IIT Kharagpur and NITIE to drive R&D on AI-ML technologies. The o9-IITKGP-NITIE Program is a cohort-based research program with the common go al of creating high quality research papers in the field of AI-ML by using the o9 Platform, which will foster imm ediate adoption by the industry.
Dr. Narasimha Kamath (PhD, IIM Calcutta) Senior Vice President – R&D, o9 Solutions and Prof. Manoj Kumar Tiwari (FNAE, FNASc, FIIIE, FIISE, and FIETI) Director, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) will be guiding the entire collaboration.
o9 will host research projects in association with the various departments at IIT Kharagpur and NITIE. It will also provide students an opportunity to participate in research initiatives where they will be provided with real wor ld complex/large datasets and would run new generation algorithms to improve forecasts, hence facilitating a better demand planning process. This collaboration aims to bring together a world class pool of expertise in both industry and academia, enabling students from IIT KGP to work on other next generation and cutting-edge tech nologies. o9 will provide research scholars with an access to the company’s SaaS platform, and software for the educational curriculum for skill development at these institutes too. As part of this relationship o9 will also pro vide exciting career opportunities to students from these prestigious universities.
“Sales forecasting is of utmost importance for inventory management to increase profit and reduce inventory holding and storage costs. There are many off-the-shelf forecasting algorithms available in the market. ‘Temporal Fusion Tran sformers for Interpretable Multi-horizon Time Series Forecasting’ is a unique research project which incorporates feature functions of products in demand planning. The research students implemented and ran this Forecasting on o9 platform, and we are seeing very promising results on large customer datasets”, stated Dr. Narasimha, Senior Vice President – R&D, o9 Solutions.
“Due to the large number of commodities and the complexity of the market, understanding the sales behavior of the ret ail industry is very crucial. Hence finding the optimal inventory requires accurate modeling and forecasting of a retail co mpany. Along with that the availability and relevance of historical data, selection of key factors, the time period to be forecast, degree of desirable accuracy and cost-benefit are crucial for market prediction. The main focus of this research collaboration is to apply advanced AI/ML techniques for better forecasting of sales,” said Rony Mitra, Research Sch olar, Department of Mathematics, IIT Kharagpur.
“As organizations look to modernize and optimize processes, machine learning is an increasingly powerful tool to drive automation. This meaningful collaboration between o9 solutions and eminent academic institutions like IIT KGP and NI TIE will foster innovation and growth in new technologies. As India ushers in the era of digitization, it is in the enviable position of having a young tech-savvy population ready to apply its learnings in key fields such as AI and Big Data to sol ve major challenges of different technological sectors. Premier institutions like IIT KGP and NITIE will engage young res earchers to apprehend and solve practical industrial problems that will provide institutional knowledge about a given process. Such symbiotic relationship benefits society, stimulating a trained workforce providing today’s most pressing challenges and creating a technological advantage to improve industries gaining competitive advantage in the mark etplace.” said Prof. Manoj Kumar Tiwari, Director, National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE).
o9 also collaborates with incubators at leading Indian universities to strengthen regional research and innova tion ecosystems in AI / machine learning space and provides mentorship and capacity for building these next generation solutions. This partnership is part of o9’s social impact initiative and aligns with the sustainable de velopment goal of “Partnership for Goals”.
About o9 Solutions, Inc.
o9 Solutions is a leading AI-powered platform for integrated business planning and decision-making for the en terprise. Whether it is driving demand, aligning demand and supply, or optimizing commercial initiatives, any planning process can be made faster and smarter with o9’s AI-powered digital solutions. Bringing together te chnology innovations—such as graph-based enterprise modeling, big data analytics, advanced algorithms for scenario planning, collaborative portals, easy-to-use interfaces, and cloud-based delivery—into one platform. For more information, please visit www.o9solutions.com.
About IIT Kharagpur
IIT Kharagpur is one of the top institutes of India. Established in 1951, the institute is the first of the IITs to be established and is recognised as an Institute of National Importance. In 2019 it was awarded the status of Ins titute of Eminence by the Government of India. It is recognized worldwide as a leader in the field of engineering education and research. To know more visit www.iitkgp.ac.in
About NITIE
National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) is one of the top institutes of India. National Institute of Ind ustrial Engineering offers post graduate diplomas in various fields of management and industrial engineering. It also offers doctoral level fellowship programs. Annually, NITIE trains over 2000 professionals through its vari ous week long Management Development Programs (MDPs) and the unit based programs (UBPs) in different areas of Industrial Engineering & Management. To know more visit www.nitie.ac.in
