"Smart" Sense: OMRON, IBM Collaborate on "Green" Transportation Solutions

TOKYO .- Japanese sensor and control equipment maker OMRON Corporation (TSE: 6645) (PINKSHEETS: OMRNY) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) are working together to provide “smart” solutions that lower energy use, reduce carbon dioxide emissions and increase efficiency in transportation operations.

The solutions will help clients decide which types of shipping and transportation to use and the best travel routes for reducing costs and CO2 emissions in the delivery of packages, parts, supplies and finished goods.

The companies will combine OMRON’s sensor capabilities and experience in traffic control, vehicle weight measurement, and transportation distance and loading ratios systems with the advanced mathematic calculation technologies of IBM’s Virtual Routing Planner and Modal-Shift Transportation Planner offerings.

The two companies will work together to assist clients in addressing anticipated regulatory restrictions and penalties for CO2 emissions. The collaboration is consistent with IBM’s “smarter planet” initiative, which envisions a world where everything is instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. This can provide greater understanding that allows better decision making, leading to increased efficiency, improved performance, lower costs and reduced environmental impact.

IBM and OMRON will provide these solutions initially for Japanese clients, primarily in the manufacturing and transportation industries -- globally, those industries account for more than half of all energy use and corresponding CO2 emissions. The solutions could later be expanded for additional countries and industries.

IBM’s Modal-Shift Transportation Planner analyzes timetables of various shipping services, such as ship, air, train and truck, taking delivery date of goods into consideration, to choose the best shipping method for reducing costs and CO2 emissions.

Virtual Routing Planner plans the best routes for trucks to use to minimize CO2 emissions, based on digitalized road map information and accounting for various conditions such as delivery, collection, time frame and vehicle type.

Both IBM solutions use high-performance optimization algorithms developed by IBM’s Tokyo Research Laboratory.

Modal-Shift Transportation Planner and Virtual Routing Planner join a growing portfolio of consulting services from IBM to help clients address sustainability issues. Those offerings include: the CSR Assessment and Benchmarking Utility, the Carbon Tradeoff Modeler, Green Sigma™, Environmental Product Lifecycle Management, the Supply Chain Network Optimization Workbench (or SNOW), Strategic Carbon Management, and the Public Sector Energy and Environment Diagnostic.