Waitrose bakeries – part of the John Lewis Partnership – had the Bakery Optimisation Tool (BOT) developed by the data science team to anticipate customer demand, reduce waste and assist in increasing sales. The BOT solution leverages data and predictive analytics tools to provide in-store bakers with the information needed to know what to bake, volumes to bake and when it is most efficient to bake it. This solution has streamlined operations and increased bakery efficiencies which has saved John Lewis Partnership millions of pounds worth of incremental value. Furthermore, BOT has removed the need for manual spreadsheets – saving more than 200 hours per year – and a collaborative dashboard enhances the shopping and partner experience.
“Brilliant. Love the problem it’s trying to solve. Love the end-to-end, automated nature of the solution. Love the benefits. What’s not like?” – Judges’ comment
Historically, Waitrose bakeries have had to rely on seasoned expertise and intuition to finalise what shall be baked daily and in what quantities which left much room for error and often missed maximised bakery sales. Now, with BOT, bakers are able to provide precise volumes of goods that can serve customers throughout the day in addition to increasing profits and sales. BOT works by drawing upon historical data and complementary data sets and turning it into easy-to-read visualisations through the dashboard providing unique daily recommendations for bakers.
The data science model that has been developed draws upon years of historical sales data and complementary datasets. By leveraging the partnership data platform (PDP), MLOps platform Dataiku and Analytics platform Tableau, the data team automated the model end-to-end to provide bakeries with an easy-to-understand bake plan.
Customers are provided with a better-quality product, there is reduced waste and there is an improved level of transparency which in turn has improved training and collaboration. The BOT is an excellent example of how data science can be effectively applied to real-world business challenges, and since the solution has been implemented, Waitrose bakeries have experienced a significant increase in profitability and increased sales worth millions of pounds.
