Digital innovation
We’re harnessing the next generation of digital technologies to drive innovation.
As a global food and beverage company with products reaching billions of people around the world, we aim to work faster and more efficiently, while addressing global food system challenges.
We identify opportunities across our global R&D organization to leverage AI, machine learning, data science and predictive analytics. This helps our engineers, product designers and operators connect the dots quicker, gain valuable insights and continue to deliver novel innovations today and for generations to come.
Algorithms for optimized recipes
Our recipe optimization tool uses advanced algorithms to help our product developers better manage tradeoffs between ingredients, nutrition, cost and sustainability, while still meeting consumer expectations.
Virtual prototypes, birth certificates and digital twins
While developing the new Nescafé Dolce Gusto Neo coffee system, our experts optimized the process through virtual simulations before applying technical settings on the physical machine. This helped them make quick and efficient decisions to manage the complex interaction between coffee, paper packaging material and the machine to ensure the perfect coffee cup for consumers. The manufacturing lines were set up with digital twins and consumer testing was done in virtual reality. Each Nescafé Dolce Gusto Neo coffee pod also has a digital birth certificate, which helps track the pod across the manufacturing process to improve efficiency.
Personalized nutrition for pets
In petcare, we developed a holistic product ecosystem to help monitor cat health by tracking changes in unique health and behavioral data patterns and provide tailored recommendations to pet owners. The ecosystem includes a Petivity Smart Litterbox where pet owners can track changes in urination, defecation and weight patterns for cats. Using this data together with proprietary algorithms, the ecosystem can identify an increased risk of developing conditions such as kidney disease, urinary tract infections and obesity. Using a mobile app, our proprietary AI shares this information and provides expert advice to pet owners, including recommendations for veterinarian visits when relevant.
Data science for climate resilient coffee
Our plant scientists are exploring how advanced data science and artificial intelligence can be leveraged to help select and breed more climate-resilient plants.
In collaboration with external universities, these experts have developed a very high quality arabica reference genome using advanced data science methods. The reference genome, which is available in a publicly available digital database, makes it easier to analyze different coffee varieties to identify specific traits such as better yield, coffee cherry size and greater resilience to disease or drought, as well as flavor or aroma characteristics.
Digital tools for food safety
Our Food Safety Early Warning uses a cutting-edge solution to detect potential food safety risks. The tool SGS-Digicomply, co-created with our partner SGS, uses AI-powered algorithms to monitor more than 10,000 trusted web sources, including scientific literature and regulatory alerts translated from 90 different languages. It scans them in real-time for any relevant data on existing or emerging food safety hazards.
This helps our teams to identify emerging risks, such as new contaminants which can then be assessed and prioritized. Importantly, the tool has been made commercially available, giving small and medium-sized food companies access to the same insights.
