Omya Hustadmarmor's routing DSS saved $7 million a year on slurry shipping.

Omya Hustadmarmor supplies calcium carbonate slurry to European paper makers from a single Norwegian processing plant, using chemical tank ships of various sizes.

In 2001, with planning overwhelmed, CEO Sturla Steinsvik turned to Møre Research Molde, which built a decision-support system around a metaheuristic for maritime inventory routing.

The DSS saves close to $7 million a year in production and transport costs, with a projected $4 million more as larger ships join the fleet; it avoided $35 million in investment by raising capacity utilization and cut oil consumption by more than 10 percent. Omya was a 2006 Edelman finalist.

Route ships and production together, not separately

One model sets production, port inventories and ship routes together.

Bigger ships' economies are captured because planning complexity is handled by the solver.

Predictable, flexible planning let the company defer or avoid expansion investment.

When transport and production interact, optimize them as one inventory-routing problem: the savings from bigger equipment are captured only if planning keeps up.

The DSS stayed in daily use and the company kept adding larger vessels as planned; the case became a standard reference in maritime inventory routing and is cited in OR teaching on integrated logistics.