The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) has awarded UPS its Franz Edelman Award for the development of the company’s proprietary routing software ORION (On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation).
ORION uses fleet telematics and complex algorithms to crunch 1,000 pages of code and more than 250 million address data points to provide UPS drivers with optimized delivery routes each day. ORION was officially launched in the USA in 2013 and is on schedule to be fully deployed throughout the country by the end of 2016.
Juan Perez, chief information officer, UPS, said, “ORION is a testament to the scale of innovation that can be accomplished when operations research, information technology and business processes are seamlessly integrated.
“Success didn’t come overnight. It took hard work by more than 700 UPS employees, who dedicated themselves to the development and deployment of ORION for many years. And we are just at the beginning of harnessing the power of ORION to fuel new, innovative products and services.”
When fully deployed the ORION system is expected to result in annual savings of 10 million gallons of fuel, 100,000 metric tons in CO? emissions, and an estimated US$300m to US$400m in savings and cost avoidance.
Mark Wallace, senior vice president of global engineering and sustainability, UPS, said, “ORION has been a game changer for UPS, impacting 55,000 drivers across 1,000 buildings in the USA when it is fully deployed. ORION has made us better at serving our customers how they want, when they want, where they want.”
April 12, 2016
