Beyond the ERP: How Harumi Combines AI and Operations Research to Democratize Industrial Optimization
Beyond the ERP: How Harumi Combines AI and Operations Research to Democratize Industrial Optimization
There is a well-known, persistent gap in the manufacturing world: the disconnect between sales forecasts and actual shop floor execution.
While mid-to-large-size manufacturers operate with robust Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), the tactical heart of the operation—Production Planning and Control (PP&C)—remains highly manual, reative, and spreadsheet-reliant.
In a recent interview with Manufacturing Technology Insights—which recognized Harumi as the Top AI-Powered Production Planning Platform for 2026—our CEO, Miriam Koga, shared her core vision for the platform. She explained how advanced technology is finally making world-class decision science accessible to the factory floor.
In this article, you will discover why traditional planning logic fails to capture factory-floor complexities and how Harumi is leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research to build custom optimization models tailored to the reality of each manufacturer.
Table of Contents
In this article, you will explore:
The Harumi Vision: Why mathematical optimization cannot be a "one-size-fits-all" solution.
The Operations Research Gap: Why most manufacturers struggle to build mathematical optimization models internally.
Seamless Coexistence: How Harumi integrates with existing ERPs, MES platforms, and legacy spreadsheets.
Mapping Planning Bottlenecks: The real-world production challenges our platform resolves.
The Technology Behind the Platform: How fine-tuned AI accelerates mathematical modeling and simplifies the user experience.
The Developer Solution: How Harumi serves enterprises with internal Data Science and Operations Research teams.
The Elite Leadership Team: The backgrounds of Miriam Koga, André Koga, Ricardo Leão, and Bruno Brito.
Key Milestones: Funding, awards, and quick facts.
Conclusion: Stepping into the future of prescriptive manufacturing.
Key Takeaways: At a Glance
No two factories are alike: Every plant operates under a unique set of products, constraints, changeovers, shift schedules, and business rules.
AI + Operations Research (OR): Harumi's specialized AI accelerates mathematical modeling, allowing us to build personalized planning engines in record time.
No "Rip-and-Replace" Required: Harumi does not replace your ERP or MES; it sits on top as an intelligent, prescriptive decision layer.
Systemic Optimization: Instead of optimizing individual machines in isolation, Harumi treats the entire factory as an interconnected system.
The Harumi Vision: Custom Optimization for a Unique Manufacturing World
"Harumi's vision is to bring world-class operations research expertise to manufacturers that would otherwise never have access to it."
— Miriam Koga, CEO of Harumi
If you visit ten different factories within the exact same industry, you will find ten completely different operations. Each has its own machines, sequence-dependent setup times, operator shift rules, material limitations, physical storage bottlenecks, and commercial priorities.
Because of this diversity, generic, off-the-shelf software or static planning logic fails. Traditional tools force your factory to adapt to the software, rather than adapting the software to your factory's real-world constraints.
Harumi solves this problem by combining Artificial Intelligence with dedicated Operations Research (OR) consulting.
Instead of relying on rigid, generic templates, our platform uses fine-tuned AI to empower our team to rapidly develop personalized optimization models. This ensures the recommendations planners receive are grounded in the actual, physical realities of their specific shop floor—not a theoretical, idealized factory model.
The Operations Research Gap: Why Manufacturers Struggle to Scale Otimization
Operations Research (OR) is the perfect mathematical discipline for PP&C because it is designed to find the absolute best way to allocate limited resources under complex constraints. However, leveraging it has historically been an exclusive privilege of global conglomerate giants.
There are three primary reasons why mid-to-large-size manufacturers struggle to adopt OR on their own:
Lack of Specialized Talent: Most manufacturing companies do not have in-house data science or operations research teams capable of writing complex mathematical optimization algorithms.
Infrastructure Barriers: Solving optimization problems at scale requires massive computing power, commercial solvers, and specialized mathematical engines.
Spreadsheet Reliance: Lacking these tools, planners are forced to rely on manual spreadsheets, static ERP rules, and tribal knowledge to plan production.
Harumi removes these barriers by managing the entire technological stack. We deliver enterprise-grade optimization models tailored to your business, allowing you to benefit from advanced mathematics without the overhead of building an in-house team or managing complex tech infrastructure.
Seamless Integration: Coexisting with ERPs, MES, and Spreadsheets
One of the greatest fears for any Director of IT or Operations is the friction of integrating a new planning system. Legacy system migrations are notoriously slow, expensive, and risky.
Harumi was designed with a completely different philosophy: we do not replace your existing systems; we make them smarter.
The Harumi platform integrates directly with your existing infrastructure to continuously ingest data and automate planning decisions, including:
ERP Systems: To pull current orders, customer due dates, and material inventory.
MES Platforms & Databases: To monitor real-time machine run-times and downtime.
APIs & Internal Databases: To map labor constraints and specific operational business rules.
What if your data is still fragmented?
We understand that many manufacturers still operate with manual spreadsheets and exported reports. To ease this transition, Harumi can run during the initial implementation phase using manually maintained spreadsheets and exported reports as inputs.
This ensures your team can begin capturing the massive financial and operational benefits of mathematical optimization immediately, without having to wait for a long integration project to finish.
Mapping Planning Bottlenecks: What Challenges Does Harumi Solve?
Harumi focuses on bottlenecks created by planning complexity rather than individual machine speeds. By viewing the factory as an interconnected system, our optimization models resolve the core points of friction in your PP&C:
Industrial Planning Bottleneck | How Harumi Solves It |
High Setup Times & Changeovers | Automatically sequences orders to group similar runs, significantly reducing machine downtime. |
Excess Inventory & Forecast Errors | Connects actual production capacity with demand to buffer against inaccurate commercial forecasts. |
Constrained Production Lines | Balances the distribution of production orders across limited machines and specialized labor. |
Volatile Market Demands | Rapidly recalculates S&OP and short-term schedules when machine downtime or rush orders occur. |
Complex Trade-offs | Evaluates the financial impact of trade-offs between delivery speeds, inventory carry costs, and overtime. |
Now, we will pull back the curtain on the proprietary technology powering the Harumi platform, explore our dual-audience approach for enterprises, and meet the elite leadership team driving this industrial revolution.
How Harumi’s Hybrid Model Accelerates Planning Speed and Usability
Many software providers claim to use "Artificial Intelligence" for manufacturing, but they often use generic, off-the-shelf algorithms that fail to capture the nuances of a complex factory floor.
Harumi's distinct technological advantage lies in combining AI with deep operations research expertise to build highly personalized optimization platforms for each manufacturer.
Fine-Tuned AI: The Mathematical Accelerator
Building tailored mathematical models for a factory's unique constraints used to take operations research consultants months of manual coding. Harumi has completely bypassed this bottleneck.
Our fine-tuned AI is specifically trained for operations research workflows. It acts as a force multiplier for our consultants, helping them develop custom mathematical models in a fraction of the traditional time. This specialized AI enables Harumi to rapidly map a factory’s unique products, machine behaviors, labor limitations, and specific business rules into high-performance optimization engines.
Explaining the "Why" Behind Every Schedule
One of the biggest historical barriers to adopting mathematical optimization in factories is the "black box" problem. Planners are hesitant to trust a schedule if they don't understand how the computer generated it.
Harumi breaks open the black box by using AI to generate personalized user interfaces and interactive chat assistants:
Personalized Interfaces: AI enables us to rapidly build user-friendly interfaces tailored to the planning team's daily workflows.
Interactive AI Chat Assistant: Every Harumi solution includes an AI assistant that planners can chat with to query recommendations, explore alternative "what-if" scenarios, and receive instant explanations of the business rules, assumptions, and constraints behind any decision.
This gives planning teams total autonomy and reduces their day-to-day dependence on technical consultants to understand scheduling logic.
The Operating System for Industrial Optimization: Built for All Scales
While many mid-sized manufacturers lack internal math and data science teams, large-scale industrial enterprises increasingly employ their own optimization engineers and data scientists to build decision-support tools.
Harumi is designed to serve both ends of the market by evolving into a comprehensive, dual-audience optimization platform:
1. For Companies Without Internal OR Teams
Harumi provides a fully managed, end-to-end service. Our team uses our proprietary AI platform to build, deploy, and continuously maintain personalized optimization models tailored to your exact factory floor.
2. For Enterprises with Internal OR & Data Science Teams
Harumi provides a complete, low-code development environment designed to supercharge your internal team's productivity:
Integrated Code Blocks: A dedicated space for internal engineers to write and refine custom optimization models.
Solver Integration: Built-in connections to leading commercial optimization solvers and specialized mathematical engines.
Low-Code UI Deployment: Tools that allow internal data scientists to instantly deploy production-ready, highly intuitive interfaces to business planners and operators.
Reusable Modules for Rapid Deployment
To ensure fast implementations, Harumi is continuously expanding a growing library of reusable optimization modules for common industrial challenges:
Production Planning & Sequencing: To balance capacities and reduce setup times.
Inventory Optimization: To align stocks with actual production and sales realities.
Vehicle Routing: To optimize logistics, distribution, and transport routes.
For unique bottlenecks that fall outside these pre-built modules, our fine-tuned AI assists optimization engineers in rapidly developing and launching completely custom projects.
Leadership and Vision: The Experts Driving Harumi's Innovation
A technology is only as strong as the team building it. One of Harumi's most prominent competitive differentiators is its founding and technical leadership team, which merges deep expertise in manufacturing operations, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, and large-scale mathematical optimization.
Miriam Koga (CEO): Miriam studied Engineering at Georgia Tech and was part of the founding team at Tractian, an industrial IoT company serving manufacturers that is now valued at approximately US$800 million. Her hands-on experience scaling operations and working directly with factory managers ensures Harumi's solutions are deeply rooted in real-world shop floor needs.
André Koga (CTO): André studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech and leads the development of Harumi's AI platform. Having earned multiple medals in international mathematics olympiads, his strong foundation in mathematical reasoning enables him to design AI systems that dramatically accelerate operations research workflows.
Ricardo Leão (Head of Operations Research): Ricardo brings over ten years of experience building advanced optimization and analytics solutions. At Mercado Libre, he built and led a 19-person analytics and data science team that designed optimization products generating over US$60 million in operational savings. Previously, he led data science and optimization projects at Accenture across industrial, logistics, and healthcare applications.
Bruno Brito (Operations Research Advisor): Bruno holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research and has over 20 years of experience as an optimization consultant. His expertise in industrial algorithms and decision-support systems ensures Harumi’s mathematical engines are both academically rigorous and highly practical on the shop floor.
Together, this team understands the mathematical complexity of industrial planning and the fast-paced, high-stress reality of manufacturing.
Harumi: Quick Facts & Milestones
Founding Year: 2025
Headquarters: San Francisco, California
Venture Capital Funding: Raised US$600,000 in seed funding from leading investors and operators aligned with our vision of transforming manufacturing operations.
Prominent Clients: KPMG, Cyrela, AFM.
Awards & Recognition:
Named the Top AI-Powered Production Planning Platform for 2026 by Manufacturing Technology Insights.
Recognized as One of the 10 Most Innovative Brazilian Startups of 2025 by KPMG.
Featured on the 2025 Global Tech Innovator Brazil award list, recognizing the most sophisticated innovations in the country’s tech ecosystem.
Conclusion: The Operating System for Industrial Optimization
For decades, manufacturing leaders assumed that the only way to scale production was through physical expansion—buying more machines, building bigger warehouses, or adding shifts.
But in a modern, highly competitive, and volatile global market, the companies that win are not necessarily the ones with the most machinery, but the ones that make the smartest, most agile decisions.
By replacing static spreadsheets and generic ERP planning with a personalized, AI-powered optimization engine, Harumi is giving manufacturers a new path to efficiency. Our platform empowers your planning team, minimizes costly changeover waste, reduces inventory excess, and aligns your entire factory to run at its true, maximum capacity.
The future of manufacturing isn't about replacing human planners. It is about augmenting them with personalized, mathematical systems that continuously prescribe the most profitable path forward.
Are you ready to unlock the hidden capacity of your factory? Learn more about Harumi's platform and book a tailored demo for your operation today.
