Sweet IoT Journey: How One Solution Provider Helped Implement Microsoft Azure Machine Learning At Hershey

An early dive into the Internet of Things landscape yielded sweet rewards for The Hershey Company once the chocolate manufacturer began tracking the weight of Twizzlers during production. That was the story Luis Morinigo, IoT and advanced analytics practice lead for Washington, D.C.-based solution provider New Signature, shared with a audience of midmarket IT leaders Monday evening at the Midsize Enterprise Summit. He and George Lenhart, the former senior manager of IS disruptive solutions at Hershey, explained that while the journey involved several challenges, their ability to leverage machine-learning-fueled analytics ultimately paid meaningful financial dividends. Morinigo said the advent of scalable cloud-based analytics – Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, in this case – became a catalyst for the Twizzlers project because it reduced technical barriers involved in implementing data science capabilities. As other companies began applying IoT to maintenance and operations, Hershey and New Signature felt a clear need to move forward.