Raw milk supply shifts daily, shelf life runs down on every line at once, and one quality hold can reach the retailer by the end of the week. Aera senses changes across supply, inventory, and demand; recommends actions that cut waste and keep shelves full; and executes them within policy guardrails.
The data already exists in your systems. The cost lands in what happens between the data and the action.
Suppliers deliver above or below plan without warning, and production, inventory, and distribution all have to absorb it.
The clock is running on yogurt, cream, cheese, and butter at once, and the window to redeploy a batch closes in days.
A hold that drags on for days instead of hours turns into emergency runs, half-full trucks, and retailer penalties.
Aera automates the routine decisions, augments the complex ones, and executes both in real time. Dairy teams see the payoff in five areas of the business.
Touchless forecasting unifies the data and adjusts across SKUs and time horizons on its own, so adding a yogurt, cheese, or butter line does not add planning work.
Batch-level expiration risk is connected to real demand signals, with mitigation attached: change the recipe, dry it, convert excess cream to butter, reroute short-dated stock, or write it off when that is genuinely the best call.
Rebalancing moves inventory across plants, regional DCs, and retailer warehouses before it goes at risk or falls short of retailer freshness requirements.
Stockout risk is scored before it reaches the customer, with transfers, expedited orders, or an emergency run on a high-velocity SKU recommended while each is still an option.
Routine inventory and production decisions run without a planner in the loop, so the time goes to the judgment calls that actually move the business.
Aera was named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Decision Intelligence Platforms. In the companion Critical Capabilities report, Aera scored among the highest across all four use cases.
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Decision Intelligence Platforms, David Pidsley, Carlie Idoine, Gareth Herschel, Kevin Quinn, Kjell Carlsson, 26 January 2026. Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Decision Intelligence Platforms, Carlie Idoine, David Pidsley, Kevin Quinn, Gareth Herschel, Kjell Carlsson, 27 January 2026. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. GARTNER and MAGIC QUADRANT are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
Prepackaged decision logic your teams can run on day one, tuned to daily intake variability, compressed shelf life, and a refrigerated network.
Recommends adjusted forecasts based on real-time signals.
Recommends waste mitigation options: recipe changes, drying, converting excess cream to butter, rerouting short-dated yogurt or cheese to discount channels, donation, or write-off when necessary.
Recommends targeted actions, including stock transfers between locations, expediting planned or purchase orders, and triggering emergency production runs for high-velocity SKUs.
Recommends transferring stock from source to destination across a defined group of materials and SKUs, optimized for refrigerated truck utilization and remaining days of cover.
Also relevant to dairy operations: Dynamic Safety Stock, Efficient Shipping Plan, Logistics Event Management, Available to Promise, Root Cause Analysis.
How decision intelligence handles daily intake variability, compressed shelf life, and a growing portfolio, with four Skills built for dairy.
Coordinated real-time decisions across forecasting, inventory, and production, and what changes when they stop being separate.
Real-time visibility and automated inventory management applied to the waste that perishable supply chains take as a given.
Reducing spoilage and preventing overstock by putting forecasting and inventory decisions on the same footing.
