More efficient planning of feed transports at one of the world's largest salmon producers

Intro

Improved planning of marine feed transport

One of the world's largest producers of farmed salmon operates in several countries and handles very large volumes of feed to its farms each year. With production in hundreds of thousands of tonnes per year, high demands are placed on planning, precision, and coordination in the logistics chain.

The feed deliveries are a business-critical part of the operation – both from a cost, quality, and sustainability perspective. To meet these requirements, the client initiated work to improve the planning of marine feed transports to their facilities.

Case

Starting position and challenge

The planning of feed deliveries was largely done manually, based on information from several different systems. Order data was retrieved from the business system, while loading planning, route selection, and capacity assessments required significant manual work.

The operation handles very large volumes - up to tens of thousands of tonnes per ship and week - and each transport is affected by several parameters, such as routes, the number of silos at the receiving location, and different types of feed that must not be mixed. This made planning both time-consuming and vulnerable to errors, while the ability to work proactively and long-term was limited.

The goal was to create better oversight, reduce dependence on manual processes, and improve the quality of planning decisions.

Implementation and collaboration

The work was carried out in close collaboration between the client's operations and planning functions and Elvenite's team. The client contributed deep knowledge about their operational processes, logic regarding feed management, and requirements related to transport and delivery.

Elvenite's role was to translate these needs into a working, integrated solution for transport and fleet planning. The focus was on building a support that fits into the client's existing system landscape and working methods, rather than introducing a standalone tool.

The work began with a structured needs workshop based on Elvenite's established methodology. During a focused working day, a shared understanding of the business's challenges, flows, and priorities was created. This provided a clear basis for continued solution design, where principles from design thinking were used to quickly move from need to concrete, tailored solution.

Solution

The result was a shipment planner - a transport and fleet planning solution tailored to the customer's specific logistics flows. The solution automatically retrieves order information from the business system (Infor M3) and supports both preliminary and final planning of transport and loading.

The planning logic takes into account central constraints such as routes, vessel capacity, number of silos, and different types of feed. The solution is integrated with existing transport and logistics systems as well as collaboration interfaces, creating a cohesive flow from order to completed delivery.

Planners get a visual overview of upcoming transports and can work more structured with changes, adjustments, and follow-up.

Results and effects

With the new solution, the customer has reduced the number of manual steps and, thus, the risk of planning errors. The work has become less dependent on individuals and more transparent, which facilitates both collaboration and handover.

The quality of planning has improved, and the organisation has gained better foresight in its decisions. Overall, the solution has freed up the equivalent of about one full-time position, while the planning is experienced as both more reliable and more flexible.

Summary

By structuring and automating the planning of feed transports, the customer has created a more stable and future-proof support for a business-critical part of their operations - an important step in the ongoing development of an efficient and data-driven logistics organisation.