The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Operational decision · 2001–2007
Omya Hustadmarmor's routing DSS saved $7 million a year on slurry shipping.
A Norwegian plant shipped calcium carbonate slurry by sea; an inventory-routing DSS cut production and transport costs by about $7 million a year.
Omya Hustadmarmor
the move
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.
why it works
- 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.
what transfers
When transport and production interact, optimize them as one inventory-routing problem: the savings from bigger equipment are captured only if planning keeps up.
what came after
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.
references
- Omya Hustadmarmor Optimizes Its Supply Chain for Delivering Calcium Carbonate Slurry to European Paper Manufacturers (Interfaces 37(1), 2007)
- Omya Hustadmarmor optimizes its Supply Chain (seminar paper)
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