Panorama – 2 agosto 2023 |Anno LXI – N° 32

The Genoese company has gained global recognition through the development of highly innovative technology.
The world of data and artificial intelligence can sometimes seem elitist, reserved for those who have spent their lives studying the technology that has enabled the computer revolution. However, there are innovative companies that have set out to make this world accessible to a broader audience, easily and efficiently usable not only by specialized professionals but also by everyday people. One such company is Rulex, a young and dynamic enterprise that produces innovative data management software.

Rulex helps businesses leverage and improve their data, using it as a foundation for making strategic decisions or optimizing business processes. The range of potential solutions is almost limitless, including transport optimization in logistics, anti-fraud systems in banks, biomedical research, predictive maintenance for manufacturing industries, dynamic pricing strategies, and much more.

In 2014, Rulex launched the first version of its software, enabling users to independently manage business data without programming skills. To better meet user needs, Rulex Platform has been launched this year—a comprehensive product for building solutions that deliver immediate and actionable results in just a few minutes. The platform features an interactive web-interface based on the latest innovative technology and includes two components: Rulex Factory, where solutions are built from data, and Rulex Studio, which visually presents results through interactive dashboards. These interconnected components allow users, generally called Citizen Developers, to gather, process, and present their data in a single platform, without having to switch environments or need programming skills. Intuitiveness, speed, and a high level of interactivity—everything you need to truly democratize the data analysis process.

“Rulex Platform has the ability to capture data wherever it is,” explains Rulex’s CEO, “which could be in simple Excel files on laptops, tables in remote databases, web documents, or email attachments. We also offer a wide range of algorithms, including artificial intelligence techniques, which are able to provide human-readable explanations for each analysis performed. The uniqueness of these techniques lies not just in their predictive capabilities but in their ability to explain these predictions through extremely clear rules. Thanks to this, our clients can make strategic decisions that can actually influence the future, rather than passively accepting negative forecasts. Our technology is young and has enormous room for growth, very much like our team.”

Indeed, Rulex has managed to make a global impact despite (or thanks to?) the young age of its staff, with an average age of 30, and has gained the trust of giants such as Kraft-Heinz, Reckitt, UnipolSai, Banco BPM, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, British American Tobacco, Volvo, and Enel. “Certain technologies require young minds and particular attention to everything that is going on in the IT sector,” says Muselli. “That’s why we invest 60 percent of our profits in research and development and establish crucial partnerships with American universities like Tuskegee and New York University, as well as Italian universities such as the University of Genoa and Milano-Bicocca. We reach out to new graduates and those willing to learn and navigate a new world of programming languages and algorithms which we ourselves create from scratch. We can proudly say that we operate at the highest levels of expertise to put technology at the service of those without technical skills—a mission that pushes us further into the future.”

The piece is a translation of the original article in Italian curated by Prima Pagina Italia.

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Genoa, June 1, 2023 – OMP and Rulex announce the extension of their partnership to further enhance data quality in supply chain planning by providing tighter integration between Rulex Platform and OMP’s Unison Planning™.

Streamlined data quality management

The success of supply chain planning decisions depends on the precision of the underlying data, which may encompass details on products, inventory, resources, capacity, suppliers, or orders. With the continuously growing volume and complexity of such data and the expanding network of sources, innovative approaches are needed to harmonize and validate the constant flow of data.

OMP and Rulex are already collaborating on driving innovation in the data value chain to improve decision-making in supply chain planning. Today, they expand their partnership through the joint creation of an OMP-Rulex connector. This connector will leverage Rulex Platform’s data consolidation and validation capabilities to streamline the deployment of OMP’s Unison Planning™ Solution.

Intensified collaboration

The collaboration focuses on improving the quality of master and operational data through cleansing and validation functionalities, enabling streamlined integration into the OMP digital twin. OMP customers will be able to accelerate the implementation of Unison Planning™ and enhance their ability to manage a varying data landscape while using the supply chain planning solution.

Both companies will increase their capacity to implement relevant data validation logic into Rulex Platform. In addition to developing a dedicated platform extension, Rulex and OMP will jointly market this solution and are initiating a pilot program to allow key customers to participate in the design. Rulex will also participate in the 2023 OMP Conference (Barcelona, September 27 & 28).

The expansion of the commercial and innovation collaboration confirms OMP’s commitment to helping customers address the data management challenge that results in longer implementation tracks, reduced efficacy of supply chain planning processes, and less-than-optimal business value creation. Jan Snoeckx, OMP Innovation Lead, says, “This collaboration leverages OMP’s ecosystem and fits perfectly in the product strategy to offer our joint customers the best possible solution, powered by our composable and open supply chain planning platform.”

Claire Thomas Gaggiotti, Rulex Head of Sales and Marketing, adds, “The further integration of our platforms comes as a natural result of the growing demand from our joint customers, who are seeking enhanced data quality and quicker value creation. By streamlining the integration process, we’re enabling our clients to capitalize on the benefits of our combined solutions more effectively and make more informed, data-driven decisions in their supply chain planning.”

The partnership extension demonstrates the deep commitment shared by OMP and Rulex to improve data quality in supply chain planning and provide customers with the best possible solutions for optimal decision-making.

About Rulex

Rulex is a leading technology company delivering a no-code, end-to-end data management system, called Rulex Platform, which orchestrates all the steps in the data value chain (from data collection to pre-processing and advanced analytics), providing businesses with high-quality, trusted, and ready-to-use data.

Rulex Platform enables business users, from any industry or organization, to autonomously interact with their own data, building solutions adapted to their specific business needs, to take better decisions, improve efficiency, and/or automate business processes.

About OMP

OMP helps companies facing complex planning challenges to excel, grow and thrive by offering the best digitized supply chain planning solution on the market. Hundreds of customers in a wide range of industries – spanning consumer goods, life sciences, chemicals, metals, paper and packaging – benefit from using OMP’s unique Unison Planning™.

 

Contact information

OMP	Rulex
Jan Snoeckx OMP Innovation Lead Phone: +32 475 75 04 82 Email: jsnoeckx@omp.com	Claire Thomas Gaggiotti Rulex Head of Sales and Marketing Phone: +39 333 812 8032 Email: claire.thomasgaggiotti@rulex.ai
Paul Delbar OMP Technology Alliance Lead Phone: +32 471 046 662 Email: pdelbar@omp.com

Genoa, 8 June 2022 – UniGe (University of Genoa) and Rulex, the digital transformation and artificial intelligence specialists, have signed an agreement to strengthen their training and research partnership, aiming to support students as they move from university into the world of employment.

At the core of the agreement is UniGe’s involvement in the Rulex University Program, which offers university students online study pathways and professional certifications in subjects ranging from data collection and analysis to using AI algorithms to predict future scenarios and optimise industrial processes.

“The wireless telecoms networks of the future will enable much faster data transfer speeds than we see today, a greater number of connected devices and much higher volumes of traffic, with very few delays. This will enable us to create applications that were unthinkable until very recently. The ability to manage and process Big Data using artificial intelligence-based models, algorithms and software will be strategic both in developing new services and guaranteeing security”, explains Professor Mario Marchese, Telecommunications lecturer at UniGe and Deputy Rector for the PhD program.

The online courses are an option for the Master’s Degree in Computer Science supervised by Professor Alessandro Verri, and are designed to be accessible to all UniGe students.

“Rulex Academy gives students from all faculties, scientific or not, the skills they need to analyze and process data, an increasingly fundamental requirement for the world of work”, says Claire Thomas Gaggiotti, Head of Rulex Academy.

As well as UniGe, other international universities have chosen to include Rulex Academy’s educational programs within their curricula. New York University (NYU) runs the Rulex Data-Driven Marketing course as part of its Master in Integrated Marketing, in association with Professor Federico Salvitti; Tuskegee University has been readying students for the world of work with Rulex’s professional courses for over 4 years, under the leadership of Professor Jack Crumbly.

The new agreement confirms the long-term research partnership between UniGe and Rulex, alongside prestigious global partners. “Genoa is a world-leader in artificial intelligence; the synergy between the university and the company will be vital in developing a virtuous circle in both Italy and Europe”, explains Enrico Ferrari, Head of R&D Projects.

A global-minded company with its heart in Genoa, Rulex has always worked with the University of Genoa, running internships and experimental theses that often lead to lasting working relationships and permanent contracts. “Doing work experience with us helps students hone their practical skills, narrowing the gap between university and employment, and making it easier for recent graduates to embark on their careers”, comments the Head of HR, Finance and Administration Italy.

University of Genoa contact:
Eliana Ruffoni
relazioniesterne@unige.it
+39 392 023 6359

Rulex contact:
Claire Thomas Gaggiotti
claire.thomasgaggiotti@rulex.ai
+39 333 812 8032

For further information on:

• Training: Sivia Parma silvia.parma@rulex.ai
• Careers guidance and recruiting: HR hr@rulex.ai
• Research and development: Enrico Ferrari enrico.ferrari@rulex.ai

ATLANTA, GA — June 7, 2022 — OMP and Rulex join forces to bring innovative data value stream technologies into supply chain management.

Both companies’ emphasis on innovation and customer value, OMP’s Unison Planning^TM Solution combined with the unique Rulex approach to data quality and decision automation, will allow customers to implement a more robust and automated data-driven supply chain planning process.

Building trust in the decision-making process

In today’s complex business environment, it is increasingly critical to make the right supply chain planning decisions. Planners need to provide reliable, accurate, and trusted inputs to supply chain processes, making sense of the huge volumes of master and operational data from a wide variety of sources. Data quality is often low due to multiple different formats and, inevitably, human error creeps in.

OMP Unison Planning™ optimizes an organization’s supply chain — from sales and operations to logistics and procurement — ensuring the company is aligned on strategic goals, and is the trusted solution adopted by Fortune 500 companies such as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and BASF.

“Data quality is a primary concern in every transformation initiative,” says Jan Snoeckx, OMP Innovation Lead. “Our customers are looking for innovative ways to prepare the necessary data in an automated way, by providing business users with a solution to quickly integrate new insights into master and transactional data. Above all, that process needs to be transparent and explainable, so that planning processes and decision-making run smoother with better trust in the underlying data.”

Rulex Platform integrates data-driven knowledge with human expertise, automating repetitive tasks and decision-making. But, to make a real difference, experts must be able to trust technical innovation. This is precisely why Rulex Platform is 100% no-code, and its eXplainable AI produces clear and understandable results, giving supply chain managers full visibility of the entire process and full control over final decisions.

“It is common to feel simply overwhelmed by an overabundance of data and tools, with many companies struggling to find any tangible business insights,” says Massimiliano Costacurta, Rulex Head of Marketing and Sales for Industry, “Rulex supports companies through every step in the data value chain, so they can quickly transform their raw data into practical business actions in a single tool.”

“Teaming up with OMP, and their in-depth knowledge of supply chain planning, means our customers can develop a solid and superior data value chain, resulting in better decision-making and clear business benefits.”

About OMP

OMP helps companies facing complex planning challenges to excel, grow and thrive by offering the best digitized supply chain planning solution on the market. Hundreds of customers in a wide range of industries – spanning consumer goods, life sciences, chemicals, metals, paper, and packaging – benefit from using OMP’s unique Unison Planning™ concept.

About Rulex

Rulex is a leading technology company delivering a no-code, end-to-end data management platform, which orchestrates all the steps in the data value chain (from data collection to pre-processing and advanced analytics), providing businesses with high-quality, trusted, and ready-to-use data.

 

Contact information

OMP	Rulex
Jan Snoeckx OMP Innovation Lead Phone: +32 475 75 04 82 Email: jsnoeckx@omp.com	Claire Thomas Gaggiotti Rulex Head of Sales and Marketing Phone: +39 333 812 8032 Email: claire.thomasgaggiotti@rulex.ai
Paul Delbar OMP Technology Alliance Lead Phone: +32 471 046 662 Email: pdelbar@omp.com

Milan, IT – 16 March 2022

Artificial intelligence serving medical research in Hepatology. A study carried out by Milano-Bicocca University’s Autoimmune Liver Disease Centre at the San Gerardo Hospital in Monza, alongside the Rulex Data Science Team in Genoa, has identified four new Primary Biliary Cholangitis (PBC) subtypes using clinical data from over 12,000 individuals from all over the world. The new algorithm can be added to existing prognostic scores to improve prognostic assessment for patients when they are first diagnosed.

“This is a really important study for us as patients, given the large number of Italian patients included and the potential for innovation offered by artificial intelligence,” explains Davide Salvioni, president of AMAF Onlus, the Italian association of patients with autoimmune liver disease. “A better understanding of these disorders will certainly have a positive impact on doctors’ abilities to manage them more effectively.”

PBC is a liver disease that, although rare, still affects over 10,000 people in Italy, primarily women aged over 40. The past decade has seen gradual improvements in severity stratification for patients with PBC, due in part to the development of new scores and calculators.

In recent years, artificial intelligence and machine learning have been successfully used in the study of common diseases, from infections to cardiovascular disease, breast cancer to colorectal tumors. But until now, experimental evidence for these new technologies and their applications for rare diseases, particularly PBC, was lacking.

The team at Monza’s Autoimmune Liver Disease Centre led by Professor Pietro Invernizzi used Rulex, an innovative data analysis tool. It utilizes a sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithm developed by the Rulex research and development team, coordinated by CEO Marco Muselli, and is based on a theoretical model devised by the CNR Institute for Electronics, Information Technology and Telecommunications in Genoa.

Published in Liver International journal, the study gathered the largest international cohort of PBC patients ever considered, including people from Europe, Japan and North America (DOI: 10.1111/liv.15141). The aim of the research was to draw on the huge amount of data to improve risk stratification for this rare disease. Four subgroups for the disease were identified, in order of increasing clinical severity, based on just three laboratory values: albumin, bilirubin and alkaline phosphatase.

“The Rulex team led by Damiano Verda grouped patients with PBC using a brand-  new approach, creating very simple rules that can be applied by clinicians to classify new patients when they are first diagnosed,” explains Dr. Alessio Gerussi, study leader and researcher at Monza’s Autoimmune Liver Disease Centre.

“But our work doesn’t finish here: in the future, targeted studies will integrate clinical data with data from genetic sequencing, radiology imaging and digital scans of histological slides,” Gerussi goes on. “The objective is to illustrate the disease’s heterogeneity using a much more sophisticated approach, so we can offer patients customized treatment, the ultimate aim of Precision Medicine.”

Read the press release in Italian, Ricerca medica, nuovi risultati in Epatologia con l’intelligenza artificiale.

Learn more about Rulex for medical research.

Authors:

Claire Thomas Gaggiotti & Matteo Aragone

 

2021 was a challenging year all round, with the economic and social implications of a continuing pandemic and intense climate change summits. A new year is an opportunity to look forward with optimism to new trends and initiatives.

In this article we’ll present what we feel are the six main trends and buzzwords for 2022 in digital technologies and AI.

1. Data-driven culture
2. Responsible AI
3. Explainable AI
4. AI for Sustainability
5. Citizen data science
6. Data quality
   
   

1. Data-driven culture

Practically all organizations aspire to becoming data-driven, but according to a survey conducted by Forbes contributor, Randy Bean, only a quarter of executives feel they have succeeded in bringing about this shift, stating that the problem is cultural, not technological.

Apart from the commitment of all levels of management, and sufficient budget and resources, it all comes down to a question of trust. Many managers are used to taking decisions based on gut feelings, which have probably mostly served them well so far, and are afraid of losing control to geeky data scientists. Many are also wary of the upheaval of implementing new systems and reviewing all current processes.

So it’s vital to choose the right tools, which will provide quality insight, while promoting collaboration and cooperation, such as between business and IT experts. When decision makers realize they are receiving data-driven support, and not losing their prowess to indecipherable algorithms, many more organizations will be able to successfully embrace a data-driven culture.

The process is not instantaneous: it requires investment in training – be it technical or not – in people, and, above all, in the necessary time to onboard all stakeholders. But it delivers results in terms of quality of work and improvements to process management.

2. Responsible AI

As AI permeates our everyday life, recommending films to watch, products to buy, and books to read, AI tends to be seen as a fun technology, which can improve the quality of our free time.

However, AI is also used in far more serious scenarios, such as deciding whether you’re likely to pay back a loan, or make legitimate insurance claims! Responsible or ethical AI deals with those cases where AI is used to define the moral behavior of people.

It’s not a new concept, in 2019 Europe had already produced guidelines on ethics in Artificial Intelligence, but as more cases of unfair bias come to light, including machine bias against blacks in US court sentencing and racial bias in healthcare, and hot topics of diversity and inclusion continue to demand attention, responsible AI is a major buzzword.

Although many industries are already putting ethical AI policies in place (89% of industrial manufacturers in 2021), implementing policies is a real challenge.

The initial data used to train algorithms must be free of bias, and “data scientists lack the training, experience, and business needs to determine which of the incompatible metrics for fairness are appropriate,” (Reid Blackman, CEO Virtue).

The rules produced by AI algorithms must then be closely analyzed to remove bias before being applied to new data, which means they must be clear and legible, and this brings us on to the next buzzword and big trend of 2022: Explainable AI.

3. Explainable AI

The general concept of AI is that it is extremely complicated and intrinsically inexplicable. This was certainly true in the not so-distant past, when AI algorithms were mostly black-box, producing indecipherable mathematical equations. But as we have already discussed, responsible AI means providing transparent explanations of fair play, which is often a legal requirement, so the need for transparency goes hand-in-hand with the need to ethically mitigate bias.

According to Forrester, 20% of enterprises will already rely on explainable AI in 2022, and this percentage is destined to increase vertiginously. Are there explainable AI solutions on the market ready to meet these needs, where performance is not downgraded, and additional layers of software are not required to make their results comprehensible?

Luckily the answer is yes. One of the main players in this field of innately transparent algorithms is Rulex’s Logic Learning Machine (LLM), first developed in 2014 by expert mathematician Marco Muselli. LLM produces results as totally legible if-then rules, and yet has the computational speed and accuracy of a black box solution.

4. AI for Sustainability

It is a great relief to add sustainability to the list of buzzwords for 2022, as the health and wellbeing of future generations depend on it.

In 2022 corporate sustainability is very much focused on the concrete actions which companies can take to combat climate change by reducing their carbon footprint. Over 200 of the world’s largest companies have already taken The Climate Pledge, with the aim to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2040.

But what is the role of digital technologies in this pledge?

According to The Royal Society report “Harnessing computing to achieve new zero”, digital technologies, such as machine learning and AI, could deliver nearly one third of the carbon emission reductions required by 2030.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the transportation sector is the main culprit. In 2019 it was responsible for 29% of greenhouse gas emissions, and 83% of these emissions came from small and large trucks.

There are long-term plans to reduce emissions through the adoption of electric and hydrogen trucks and biofuel, but in the short-term, digital technologies can already do a great deal by simply reducing the number of trucks on the road. This can be achieved by identifying the best routes and travel times and maximizing truck loading.

Rulex Axellerate is an innovative example of how transportation can be optimized, as it is able to consider both current and future orders, to not only identify the best shipment time, but also combine deliveries, consequently filling all trucks to their maximum capacity, and reducing the number of trucks and their carbon emissions.

5. Citizen data science

Processing small amounts of data on two or three spreadsheets is within most people’s reach, but aggregating large quantities of data, processing with predictive modelling, and process optimization involves bringing in highly specialized data scientists and data analysts. These profiles use traditionally complex tools, often based on programming languages like SQL, R, Python, and C++, which go far beyond the average business expert’s remit.

As a result, a series of no-code tools (including the Rulex Platform) have appeared in recent years, enabling advanced operations (data pre-processing, machine learning, optimization…) using visuals such as workflows. These tools are simple and intuitive enough to be used by business profiles (also called citizen data scientists or citizen developers), but are powerful enough to be appreciated by data scientists, data analysts and IT personnel.

They enable different company departments to work together, with significant improvements in terms of results and time savings – amounting to 4.6X productivity gain over traditional programming according to research by No-Code Census.

And companies have taken note: the low code market is growing annually by more than 20% , according to estimates by Gartner.

6. Data quality

We’ve covered many different aspects so far: corporate culture, processes, technologies, tools… but one obvious and utterly essential prerequisite is missing… What’s needed are data, specifically, clean and reliable data.

Two years of Covid have taught us the importance of clean and consistent data. We’ve all read data-driven conflicting predictions by scientists, physicians and research institutes. There are many reasons for this: data may be inconsistent (based on different assumptions, or samples), or “dirty” (incomplete, with input errors) and therefore difficult to read. The lower its quality, the more data is open to different interpretations, and consequent incorrect predictions.

A similar scenario applies to corporate data. Bad data can lead to inefficient operations, lost profits and mistakes in strategic decision making. It’s estimated that large US enterprises lose 15 million dollars a year because of bad data. So it’s essential to prioritize the data quality process, from data creation to storage, guaranteeing accuracy, accessibility, completeness, consistency, validity, and uniqueness. The road ahead is clear: according to Gartner, by the end of 2022 an impressive 70% of companies will be closely monitoring the quality of their data.

One of the most innovative aspects is without doubt augmented data quality, which makes it possible to suggest automatic adjustments and correct data. Rulex RDC, for example, tracks down data inconsistencies even where correlations seem impossible to find, and even suggests data corrections that business experts can accept, refuse or improve.