INFORM is a global pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI)-powered optimisation software. The company empowers customers to master complexity in business processes by utilising cutting-edge AI technologies consistently aligned with human objectives. The North American market is a big one for the firm. At AGG-1/World of Asphalt 2025 in St Louis, Missouri (25-27 March), Aggregates Business caught up with INFORM North America’s CEO, Justin Newell.
Justin Newell is understandably in a good mood when in conversation with Aggregates Business on Day 1 of AGG1/World of Asphalt 2025. INFORM North America is seeing impressive business growth, and Newell and his senior management team have a clear vision of how the Atlanta, Georgia-based division of the Aachen, Germany-headquartered company will develop its customer offer, including for building material producers, in the next few years.
Globally, INFORM has over 1,300 employees and serves over 2,000 global clients in various industries such as quarrying, construction, logistics, aviation, warehousing, workforce planning, inventory and supply chain management, banking/insurance/credit card/wire transaction fraud detection and prevention, and finished vehicle logistics.
INFORM’s logistics division pioneered algorithms in building materials logistics almost 30 years ago. Redlands in France (now part of Holcim) was the first company in the aggregates and ready-mix industry to use the company’s optimisation solution.
Today, INFORM’s logistics division has customers including big and medium-sized players like Heidelberg Materials, Holcim, and CRH. These companies have achieved significant cost savings and carbon reductions across their supply chains by leveraging algorithms, real-time data, and automated decision-making.
“We have been in North America since 1989 and started in the aviation world. It remains one of our biggest divisions,” explains Newell. “We’ve been in the construction business logistics sector since the mid-1990s. In North America, we see great interest/demand for AI optimisation. We are also doing some simulation studies for other major global industry companies.
“In North America, when you talk to people in the aviation world or the field of finished vehicle logistics, everyone knows us. Over the last two to three years, we have gained the same recognition when talking to construction, quarrying, and ready-mix concrete people. When I started [as INFORM North America COO] six years ago, we did not have a booth at these events. We walked the shows. This is our second year with an AGG-1/World of Asphalt booth.
“Hiring people like Jeff [Jeffrey Van Grootel, INFORM Senior Sales Manager] has been huge for us. He’s played on all sides of the construction materials business: working for producers, with telematics solutions companies, and also working for a somewhat competitor to INFORM. He’s reached out and worked with nimble industry companies, like PriceBee, BCMI, Digital Fleet and Truck Pay, to name a few [digital products providers for aggregates and concrete producers].
“If you look at some of the money that’s been set aside for infrastructure projects over the next few years, the construction, quarrying and ready-mix industries are great to be in.”
Compared to standard transport planning software, INFORM’s solution is powered by AI algorithms that analyse a virtually endless number of scheduling decisions in real time and identify those ideal for minimising costs and maximising service level and on-time performance, moving more payloads with fewer trucks daily.
The software integrates business line-specific optimisers (aggregates, ready-mix, cement, asphalt) into one central tool. Delivery schedules are updated every 90–120 seconds. By applying the software, dispatchers can focus on higher-level tasks and enhancing customer service.
“We do pre-planning and day of execution,” explains Newell. “As things change, starting early in the morning, with cancelled orders and changed order times and loads, we offer an optimised real-time solution to keep up with those complexities, while also giving you visibility of ‘that 2pm order that will be half an hour late’. Our software automatically updates the entire delivery schedule every minute, taking the stress out of real-time optimisation and providing the dispatch team plenty of time for customer service. Drivers may drop out, while other drivers come back in [to that day’s deliveries schedule], and you can adjust your working day in good time. All our optimisation solutions are based on [building material] loads going to the end customer.”
Newell emphasises that the best way to determine how AI will transform a producer’s business is to compare its current manual or legacy transport plans with INFORM’s AI-powered solutions.
Producers provide INFORM with real-world data from a recent transport plan, ideally covering several days (busy, average, and quiet) and representing a range of operations. Once INFORM has cleaned the data and resolved any inconsistencies with the customer’s logistics team, INFORM inputs it into its AI software to generate an optimised delivery schedule and fleet configuration. The side-by-side comparison of KPIs will reveal how AI can enhance each customer’s financial, environmental and service-level outcomes.
“Drivers are a major resource issue, and where we typically find in the use case for INFORM is when we take, say, four days of a ready-mixed concrete customer’s operational planning for 70 trucks and compare it to how our AI-powered solution would plan it. We might find a reduction in trucks by up to 30%, so that’s more material capacity per truck load,” explains Newell, adding, “Where you were getting two to three turns [deliveries and returns] per truck, you get four to five turns daily. The mileage per truck will increase, while your fleet size is reducing. That means your cost per truck goes up slightly with a massive reduction in overall fleet costs.
“I tell people that if you have 20 to 30 trucks coming out of just one quarry, you could probably effectively plan that manually. But if you have 60 or 70 trucks coming out of three different quarries, it’s much more complex. You may be saying, ‘This truck started from this quarry at 6am, and then they made a delivery at delivery point X, but going back to the same quarry may not be so efficient as going to one of the two other quarries to get their next load of material for the next customer delivery. It’s where the human planner may start to lose track of the schedule and lose out to the optimised AI-based solution.
“Our solution can help to source material for a customer delivery from multiple quarries, effectively addressing unbalanced workload or truck fleet distribution across various sites.”
A company with growing global annual revenues (More than €146 million 2024), INFORM’s results are impressive. The company says its customers typically achieve a reduction in logistics unit costs by up to 20%, an increase in loads/truck/day by up to 37%, a reduction in truck fleet size by up to 30%, and a decrease in empty mileage by up to 19%.
Aggregates producers can expect from INFORM an industry-leading cost-reduction approach and level of service excellence, as well as increased situational awareness and real-time decision-making for their dispatchers and planning team.
INFORM’s software interfaces with existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and connects with trucks through telematics, using the latest GIS and routing technology. It serves as a central planning and execution tool for dispatchers and the customer service team, supporting them along all three stages of transport planning:
• Tactical planning – INFORM’s software calculates an optimised delivery schedule and fleet configuration for the next day, incorporating the service levels selected by your dispatchers. They can also compare several scenarios at the push of a button.
• Real-time optimisation – INFORM’s software automatically updates customer schedules every minute, so there is no need to worry about order changes, cancellations, delays, truck or machine breakdowns, etc.
• Strategic planning – the INFORM system’s key performance indicators (KPIs) dramatically speed up customer strategic planning processes, such as fleet sizing or redistribution, truck right-sizing, fleet mix, hauler contracts, etc. INFORM’s on-demand strategic planning services and simulation studies have saved their customers millions.
As Newell highlights to Aggregates Business, INFORM’s software delivers increased situational awareness and real-time decision-making for a customer’s dispatchers and business-line-specific optimisers integrated into one central tool (aggregates, ready-mix concrete, asphalt and cement).
Many aggregate and ready-mixed concrete producers are working hard to reduce the carbon footprint of their products; however, a quick win on this mission is often neglected: logistics and transport.
On the road to net zero, CO2 reductions in logistics are low-hanging fruit that allow producers to reduce their footprint and save money.
Best practices in the aggregates and ready-mixed concrete industries have shown that fleets can be downsized by 10–30%, with INFORM customers simultaneously improving their customer service. That means significantly fewer trucks on roads, less idling, and fewer trucks that must be manufactured, maintained, repaired, and scrapped at the end of their lifecycle.
Newell continues: “We train our customers to use our solution and offer 365, 24/7 support. However, we don’t encounter many issues once our solution is up and running. We like to build long-term partnerships, and INFORM rarely loses customers. We also have a long tenure among our employees. We emphasise the environment and sustainability internally and for our customers’ operations.”
The environmental benefits of INFORM’s AI optimisation software will vary depending on each producer’s unique operating conditions. However, the outcomes are consistent: cost savings and environmental improvements through software-based optimisation.
Beyond these significant advantages, aggregate producers gain an additional, often overlooked benefit: By implementing AI, dispatchers can focus on higher-level tasks that no algorithm can replicate, improving customer service. Additionally, INFORM’s AI-powered solution equips customers with the necessary tools to capitalise on digital transformation fully.
Newell quotes some eye-catching numbers when asked about INFORM North America’s growth potential in the U.S. construction, aggregates and ready-mixed concrete industries: “It could be as much as 200%-300% in the next few years! Across all our verticals [divisions], we are looking for about 25% growth this year alone, which is quite strong. A lot is going on with the economy right now, and people in industries like automotive, banking, aggregates and construction tend to be cautious in their approach. However, we are still seeing a lot of projects in process. With inflation pressures and the need to maintain profitability and competitiveness, I think we will see more and more businesses looking to utilise some form of artificial intelligence-based solution to help mine their data and get better visibility of and productivity from their core assets.”
