OCP Optimizes Its Supply Chain for Africa

Operations research specialists at the OCP Group, the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, and Polytechnique Montreal operationalized a system that optimizes the OCP downstream supply chain operations. The system simultaneously schedules production, inventory, and vessels, ensuring the highest demand fulfillment level. To operationalize the system, the team equipped it with various heuristic and exact operations research tools. These tools provide the user with satisfactory schedules. Furthermore, inspired by the practice, the team implemented a novel hybrid variant of Benders decomposition, which consists of fixing some complicating variables related to confirmed orders and freeing others related to unconfirmed orders in the Benders subproblem. The system has become central to the OCP planning process. Planners use the optimizer’s solutions and insights to improve plans in different OCP sites. Initially, the system was a bottleneck, curbing the use of other supply chain management tools. OCP management now credits the system operationalization with providing operational benefits, contributing to more than a $240 million increase in annual turnover. History: This paper was refereed. Funding: This work was supported the Institute for Data Valorisation [Grant PhD-2021-6414389718], Fonds de recherche du Québec–Nature et technologies [Grant 304395], and the Office Chérifien des Phosphates Group.