Avathon launches liquid bulk logistics platform

Avathon recently launched “Autonomy for Logistics Planning,” a new liquid bulk logistics platform built with AI optimization technology.

Originally deployed with a supermajor oil and gas company to transform planning and execution of fleet operations, Avathon now is extending the same core technology for all liquid bulk logistics networks, including rail tank cars, tanker trucks, and storage terminals, the company reported. The solution has helped users unlock time and cost savings during planning and replanning, while increasing efficiency and revenue through improved fleet utilization.

“What we achieved with our first customer demonstrated the power of AI to transform complex operations and enhance profitability,” Avathon CEO Pervinder Johar said in a news release. “We are now ready to scale this first-of-its-kind planning solution to all liquid bulk shipping fleets across the globe spanning hazardous, non-hazardous, edible, and non-edible liquids and bringing enhanced safety and profitability to the industry."

According to UN Trade and Development, liquid bulk cargo constitutes nearly 40% of all maritime volume, deals with hazardous materials, requires special infrastructure, and must adhere to strict protocols. The world depends on a safe and reliable supply of liquid bulk transported over a complex, multi-modal global network. Avathon’s solution is the first and only of its kind in the market today and has already optimized “thousands” of voyages and “billions of liters” of liquid bulk shipments, the company said.

Logistics Planning is built on Avathon’s Autonomy Platform with a computational knowledge graph foundation that unifies fleet planning, scheduling, routing, management, and external rules and risk factors. The expanded application:

• Integrates diverse enterprise system data sources for cargo, shipments, assets, weather, risks, constraints, and business rules across logistics operations
• Automates planning and optimization of fleet schedules and asset utilization as the planning system of record
• Develops rapid “what-if” scenarios to evaluate trade-offs and risk-based resilience strategies. The preferred scenario can be seamlessly reviewed and approved—and even automated—for promotion to plan of record
• Incorporates historic performance and real-time conditions to enable proactive diagnostics and prescription to autonomously manage exceptions and disruptions
• Drives dynamic optimization with reinforcement learning instead of traditional static operations research techniques

The application dynamically evaluates conditions such as capacity, availability and compliance, schedules, fuel and maintenance costs, weather, labor disputes, and trade volatility. By aligning these real-time variables with operational rules and asset data, Avathon equips cargo and asset owners and operators to optimize their logistics plans to strengthen reliability and resilience while improving efficiency.