Notilyze Wins SAS Hackathon a Third Time by Tackling Food Waste

Notilyze has once again declared victory in the global SAS Hackathon. This year, competing in the Manufacturing track, the Notilyze team developed a solution that provides insights into every aspect of a cheese production process, along with an API that offers suggestions on optimizing the process. 

The food production industry is evolving continuously. Currently, many cheese producers are faced with challenges in their production processes, such as suboptimal milk quality or inefficient methods of turning that milk into cheese. As a result, manufacturers struggle to maintain consistent quality and yield. To tackle these challenges, Notilyze was given access to a mountain of data and tasked with finding a way to optimize the production process. 

Solution 

In the production process, each step has the ability to affect the quality and consistency of the final product. By collecting and analyzing data on key quality metrics (such as pH, moisture content, and flavor profile), potential issues were brought to the surface. This allowed for the necessary adjustments to be made to ensure the desired quality of the cheese. Equipped with domain knowledge, data expertise, and SAS Viya software, the Notilyze team was able to design a dashboard that provides a better understanding of all the components’ interconnectedness in the cheesemaking process. These insights led to the development of various models that are capable of predicting the yield. In addition, an API was developed with SAS Intelligent Decisioning, generating recommendations on control settings based on the type of cheese, current control settings, and the actual observed data. 

“This year we delved into an age-old topic with new team members, using many different components of the SAS Viya software to build the application. I am very proud that we produced a great improvement in a matter of weeks. We have won the SAS Hackathon three times in different categories, and it is another huge acknowledgement that the jury attributed a high score to our efforts,” says Colin Nugteren, Co-Founder of Notilyze. 

About the SAS Hackathon

SAS, global leader in analytics and AI solutions, hosts the annual SAS Hackathon as a platform to showcase the transformative power of data science in tackling real-world challenges. It brings together diverse teams from various disciplines that are assigned to work on cases spanning various industries such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and customer analytics. 

This year, close to 1300 individuals from 77 different countries applied to participate. 70 teams representing 130 organizations, universities, and SAS partners from all over the world qualified. 

More information about the winners of the SAS Hackathon can be found at: https://www.sas.com/sas/events/hackathon.html. The overall winner will be revealed at SAS Explore in Las Vegas Sept. 11-14.