Carlsberg builds AI knowledge base in two days with Microsoft Unified

Established in 1847 by brewer J.C. Jacobsen, the Carlsberg Group is one of the leading brewery groups in the world, with an attractive portfolio of beer and other beverage brands. With over 37,000 employees, and with a presence in more than 150 markets, the Group has a purpose of brewing for a better today and tomorrow. Doing business responsibly and sustainably supports that purpose—and drives the efforts to deliver value for employees, consumers, customers and society.

The company’s leadership and newly appointed CIO emphasize innovation as a strategic priority for driving organizational transformation. This represents a shift from viewing IT as a support function to treating technology as a catalyst for business innovation. The increasing interest in AI-driven solutions at Carlsberg underscores its commitment to industry differentiation

Transforming information access for supply chain teams

The Carlsberg Excellence team is dedicated to advancing operational standards, capabilities, and performance across Integrated Supply Chain and beyond. A key objective is to streamline access to critical information—such as standards, compliance documentation, best practices, and training materials. For example, the ability to efficiently retrieve a comprehensive list of 4,000 operational standards for a single manufacturing site is vital for maintaining compliance and operational efficiency. 

For a solution to be viable, it would have to quickly find the complete list of requirements, without extraneous info, and display everything in a digestible format. 

The ISC Global Brain Initiative seeks to fundamentally reshape how supply chain teams access and use this critical information. Leveraging a suite of Microsoft technologies and services, Global Brain provides enhanced information access, governance, and intelligent search across supply chain operations. Through the Microsoft Unified agreement, Carlsberg engages a Cloud Solution Architect, who provide strategic technical consulting and governance support. This ensures the environments are correctly configured by using Power Platform while compliant, production-ready AI assistants are created via Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Global Brain’s natural language understanding and intelligent search capabilities are powered by Azure AI and Azure OpenAI Service. They provide accurate, context-aware responses so users can quickly retrieve relevant information. SharePoint is the system’s primary content source, storing standards, training materials, and supply chain documentation. 

Users can interact with Global Brain using natural language by simply typing a question that they might ask a coworker, such as:
“What are the Carlsberg Excellence Foundations?”
“What training modules are available in ISC Academy for a process engineer?”
“Can you give me some ideas for eradicating my packaging material losses?”

Users can also provide instant feedback using simple thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons for each answer provided.

Nikos Floudas, Director of Carlsberg Excellence, said, “It has been a pleasure working with Microsoft Unified to rapidly develop a powerful AI agent, with a modern architecture linked to several resources, in only two days. It’s a great example of collaboration and innovation in action.”

Saving hours, driving value—and accelerating AI expansion at Carlsberg

Early users report that the Global Brain delivers highly detailed and consistent outputs. Tasks that previously required around 30 minutes of manual searching across large SharePoint libraries can now be completed within seconds. During its testing phase, Global Brain handled 200 queries from 10 testers, achieving an engagement rate above 90%—strong proof of value and user trust. In late November, Global Brain is set for an official launch, targeting over 10,000 ISC users. As usage expands across Carlsberg’s breweries and functions, the potential grows exponentially—with even modest daily use projected to save thousands of working hours annually.

Beyond ensuring operational standards, the initiative enables smarter AI operations. By tracking token consumption and benchmarking it against ROI, Carlsberg’s AI Centre of Excellence can ensure sustainable scaling of AI workloads. Optimizing the management of Copilot credits has further paved the way for a broader rollout of knowledge assistants across the organization. During the delivery of the Global Brain prototype, Unified focused on upskilling Carlsberg’s internal IT resources, ensuring the company retains full ownership, expertise, and long-term capability to evolve and maintain its AI assistants independently. Carlsberg IT seeks to replicate its success with Carlsberg ISC across other functional domains.