LONDON, UK: Celerum Limited, a portfolio company of Frontier IP Group, has launched its first commercially available product based on its novel Nature Inspired Computing (NIC) artificial intelligence to improve the efficiency of supply chains and logistics. The company’s Truck Logistics System has also won its first customer.
Truck Logistics System is aimed at companies operating small to medium-sized truck fleets, such as road hauliers, suppliers and retailers. Such firms are still typically dependent on manual processes or Excel spreadsheets to organise their operations, lacking the resources to develop the bespoke systems used by bigger companies.
Celerum’s software is easy to implement. It is cloud based and runs on standard computers with drivers able to interact with the system via their smartphones. It allows controllers to plan more effectively and to manage resources in real time, so they can optimise load capacity, drivers and route selection in response to changing conditions.
As a result, they can cut costs and carbon emissions. The first customer is a road haulier operating a fleet of about 75 trucks and 150 trailers in the north of the UK.
The technology is based on more than 25 years’ research into NIC by Celerum founder and Chairman Professor John McCall, Head of Research at the National Subsea Centre at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.
Nature Inspired Computing creates algorithms using lessons from the natural world where evolution has overcome inefficiency. For example, bees and ants are extremely good at finding the best routes to food sources or returning to their nests.
A pilot project including Celerum organised by Highlands and Islands Enterprise found that NIC-based artificial intelligence cut carbon emissions by up to 40 per cent across food and drink supply chains when allied to behavioural changes such as load sharing between producers and hauliers. A wider ranging follow up project is now being planned.
Professor John McCall, Founder and Chairman of Celerum, said: “Truck Logistics System has the potential to transform operational efficiency for hundreds of companies currently running their van and truck fleets using manual processes or spreadsheets. The fact it has already won a customer gives us every hope for further success. However, TLS is only the first commercial application of our NIC-based AI and we are confident it will be able to help solve a host of other supply chain and logistics problems.”