A global leader in analytics, operations research and technology, UPS has won the prestigious INFORMS Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences for its proprietary routing software ORION.

ORION uses advanced 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. Following the prototyping period between 2008 and 2011, and the official launch in 2013, ORION is on track to complete U.S. deployment by the end of 2016.

“ORION is a testament to the scale of innovation that can be accomplished when operations research, information technology and business processes are seamlessly integrated,” said Juan Perez, UPS chief information officer. “Success didn’t come overnight. It took hard work by 700-plus 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.

Once U.S. implementation is complete at the end of this year, the ORION deployment is expected to result in an annual savings of 10 million gallons of fuel, a reduction of 100,000 metric tons in CO2 emissions, and an estimated $300 to $400 million in savings and cost avoidance. ”ORION has been a game changer for UPS, impacting 55,000 drivers across 1,000 buildings in the United States when it is fully deployed,” said Mark Wallace, senior vice president of global engineering and sustainability. “ORION has made us better at serving our customers - how they want, when they want, where they want.”

UPS is also proud to honor Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College, the winner of the INFORMS 2016 UPS George D. Smith prize. The prize is awarded to an academic department or program for effective and innovative preparation of students to be good practitioners of operations research, management science or analytics. Named in honor of the late UPS chief executive officer from 1962 to 1972, George Smith was a patron of operations research. Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College has an approach to analytics education that resides on the bedrock principle that analytic thinking and methods only matter if they can be used to solve real problems.

The Edelman award competition recognizes remarkable examples of real-world applications of advanced analytics and operations research projects that are changing the world. Finalists were evaluated for their project’s demonstrated effect on organizational efficiency, improved business results and customer service impacts, among other criteria.