The Trimble Insight Tech Conference recently hosted its high-stakes Industry Partner Showdown, where partners displayed rapid-fire demos showcasing the latest innovations shaping the future of transportation and logistics. Emerging victorious from the stiff competition, Optym secured the impressive competitive belt. The winning team was thrilled, noting that achieving success over their fellow vendors was "quite an achievement." Despite admitting to being "a little bit nervous going in," the representatives felt they were "on cloud 9" following the turnout, and expressed that it was an "honor to be like presenting alongside all these other cool tech companies."

Optym is a logistics optimization company operating across different transportation modes, including rail, airline, and trucking. The company was founded by an MIT professor who sought to apply theoretical knowledge to practical challenges. As the head of their truckload division explained, Optym is fundamentally "all about doing more with less," focusing on robust solutions for routing, planning, and scheduling designed to get "more juice out of your fleet."

Challenging the Old School with Load AI

The centerpiece of Optym's win was their successful presentation built around a skit—a powerful strategy designed to resonate specifically with the truckload audience. While Optum has historically focused on the LTL (Less Than Truckload) side, they are actively introducing their product, load AI, to the truckload market.

Danny Zeenberg, director of product on the truckload division, explained that the skit focused on the struggle of the "manual planning process" and illustrated the necessary "changing of the guard from the old school to the new school." This theme directly addressed the common apprehension surrounding advanced technology incorporating AI.

Zeenberg made sure to clarify that load AI stands apart from marketing hype:

"It is not the AI buzzwords that you see with ChatGPT. It is literally a discrete algorithm that does the planning. It does the calculations. It is a decision maker, not just a random data generator."

The Rise of the Gamer Planner

The skit physically contrasted the "old school version" of planning with a more modern approach, portrayed by a representative dressed as a gamer, complete with a headset and hoodie. This creative concept was inspired by an anecdote shared by a chief executive on the LTL side who revealed that one of his most capable planners was, in fact, a gamer.

Sam Ahuja, VP of Transformation, who played the modern planner explained that the attire represented:

"...the new generation that's kind of um going to be taking over and using tools hopefully like ours uh to make a difference in the industry."

Optym's decisive win showcases how precise, discrete algorithmic solutions are ready to replace manual processes and define the next era of logistics planning.