Bootcathon Thailand: Cracking the Code of Supply Chain Operation

We run a tech bootcamp and hackathon for Thai students, giving them real-world challenges.
This year focused on supply chain management, helping businesses overcome one of the sector’s biggest challenges: warehouse overflow and inventory management.
Students used AI and deep data analytics to create interactive solutions.

News

2 min read

• Oct. 28, 2025

There are hundreds of ways to forecast the future, but it’s always been just a good guess, at best. So, what if we could eliminate the guesswork altogether?

That was the test for Thai students at ExxonMobil’s recent Bootcathon, a bootcamp hackathon competition where the young people create technological solutions to overcome overflowing warehouses and supply chain challenges.

Real world solutions

For ExxonMobil, the Bootcathon is more than a competition – it’s a gateway to innovation.

“ExxonMobil views AI and data analytics as both ‘tools’ and ‘partners’ that drive organizational growth,” says Suttichai Sawaengpobsook, Director and IT Manager at ExxonMobil Thailand. “The ExxonMobil Bootcathon 2025 allows young people to propose new ideas, many of which can be adapted and applied in real business contexts.”

For participants, it was a crash course in learning new skills in emerging technologies and trying to develop solutions for warehouse management and optimization to mitigate warehouse overflow.

Bootcathon Thailand - Use Emmie — AI chatbots were an interactive solution, developed to help supply chain management and inventory forecasts.

In the real world, this challenge reflects a genuine industry pain point: when warehouses are full, incoming replenishment stocks can either incur higher storage costs or be left stranded at ports causing additional demurrage cost.

This is where the power of forecasting technology comes into play: knowing how to balance current and future needs with stock levels.

“If forecasting lacks precision, costs can rise significantly,” explains Dr. Narongkorn Charusakwong, Thailand's Supply Chain Manager at ExxonMobil.

“The petroleum and petrochemical supply chain involves long, complex lead times that span upstream, midstream, and downstream operations; utilizing rail, pipelines, trucks, and ships. Planning becomes a high-stakes puzzle.”

Next-gen ideas

Nearly 600 participants across 167 teams, from 32 universities, competed in the Bootcathon to create supply chain solutions using analytics programs or generative AI.

The winners brought new ways to look at and approach the challenge.

Bootcathon Thailand - Analytics winners — Winners of the Analytics Track, ‘Team OGGY’, used machine learning to predict inventory movement.

‘Team OGGY’, from Thammasat University’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies, won the competition’s analytics track for their digital solutions to supply chain challenges.

The team identified issues in inventory data, creating a smart dashboard that identifies long aging inventory and predicts incoming stock using machine learning. Their solution helps businesses preempt for inventory fluctuations and overflow risks early.

The team said that with these features, the tool can be used to optimize inventory management activities in the planning, predicting, and prevention phases, both in the short and long term.

Bootcathon Thailand - Gen AI Track winners — Generative AI winners, ‘P'Wit Sent Us’, built a chatbot that could analyze data and create new insights.

Winners of the generative AI stream were ‘P’Wit Sent Us’, from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology, Ladkraban, who developed an AI chatbot.

Their chatbot, called SAIG: Strategic Analytics & Insights Generator, helps interactive inventory analysis activities. SAIG automatically retrieves the data, analyzes it, generates insights and even builds reports.

The team added that it can also be used for other business functions, as well in logistics and inventory management optimization.