The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Operational decision · 2014-2016
Noble's transshipment DSS saved $1M+ a month on coal
A decision-support system scheduled Indonesia's coal barges and cranes; demurrage fell and monthly savings passed $1 million.
Noble Group
the move
The Noble Group, a global supply chain manager, moved coal from Indonesian mines to ocean-going vessels via roads and rivers. Delays in this transshipment chain cost the company tens of millions of dollars a year in demurrage and detention penalties.
Noble could hire extra barges and floating cranes in advance to soften delays, but the economics of doing so were unclear. Researchers built a modelling framework and decision-support system that plans transshipment operations with fast search algorithms, balancing the cost of delays against the cost of additional resources.
The system delivered efficient schedules that minimised both delay costs and extra resources, producing monthly savings of more than $1 million.
why it works
- It turned an opaque bottleneck into a planned schedule.
- The model made the hire-more-cranes trade-off explicit.
- Fast algorithms allowed frequent replanning as conditions changed.
- Monthly savings above $1M paid for the effort quickly.
what transfers
When penalties for delay are enormous, the schedule itself is a financial instrument. A model that trades off extra resources against waiting costs turns a chaotic bottleneck into a planned one.
what came after
The case was published in Interfaces (2016). Noble's broader commodity-trading business later ran into financial difficulty for unrelated reasons, but the transshipment DSS stands as a documented example of scheduling value.
references
- Improving the Maritime Transshipment Operations of the Noble Group
- Improving the Maritime Transshipment Operations of the Noble Group
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