Data-led innovation drives award nomination

Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) has been recognised for its work in using data to help drive innovation in the red meat industry after being named as one of five international finalists in the inaugural 2017 Hitachi Transformation Award. 

The Transformation Award aims to inspire business and IT leaders in all industries to think differently about data as a strategic component to enable business and operational success, transform business models, grow market share or innovate to be internationally competitive.

The award recognises companies using Hitachi solutions to accelerate business transformation and using digitalisation as a strategic advantage.

MLA General Manager – Research, Development & Innovation, Sean Starling, said Hitachi technology was being used in a new research and development (R&D) project underway in Queensland, aimed at allowing value chain partners to share and mine data to benefit their operations.

“MLA Donor Company (MDC), in collaboration with vertically integrated beef supply chain business, Australian Country Choice (ACC) and Australian Cattle and Beef Holdings (ACBH) is undertaking the project using Hitachi’s sensor-driven data collection and analytics technology,” Mr Starling said.

“Collaboration with Hitachi includes an on-farm pilot evaluating a series of typical data streams generated by weather stations, soil moisture probes and water trough monitors that are now integrated with process intelligence and data analytics to support almost real time management decisions and forecasting.

“The objective of the project is to evaluate the integration of a data capture on farm and management systems to access improvements in processes, practices and technologies, to meet the increasing needs of the red meat industry.

“Red meat producers, through their regional beef research councils, continually identify optimising production and the efficient collection of data as key priorities for the industry R&D led by MLA. This further demonstrates the increasing need for optimising data capture and management and the provision of novel and relevant ways for whole of value chain partners to share and mine data.

“The outcomes and learnings from this project will be used to inform a number of current MLA industry imperatives and strategies under development including industry’s digital strategy, automation technology and sensing, and building data management systems to support current producer data.”

The winner of the 2017 Hitachi Transformation Award will be announced on 20 September at NEXT 2017 by Hitachi, the premiere event for the digital revolution, at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Phase one of the R&D project being supported by MDC in collaboration with Hitachi and ACC-ACBH is expected to be completed in January 2018.