The collection and movement of waste and recycling is one of the most challenging tasks within the transport industry. The wide range of collection types results in a high level of complexity, which is often compounded by their scale, frequency, geographic density and the location of processing and disposal facilities.
Transport represents a significant proportion of costs for most recycling and resource management operations and the complexity and dynamics of the routing makes it difficult and time consuming to conduct regular and detailed reviews of rounds to ensure that they are optimised for both service and efficiency. The result is that often there is a lot of unrealised potential in manually defined routes that have developed organically.
The latest route optimisation technology available to transport managers provides a high level of functionality enabling them to produce large-scale master plans optimised for municipal or commercial routes and to maintain these plans, with periodic updates with the addition or removal of customers or jobs. In addition, the latest generation of transport optimisation systems now also have the capabilities of delivering fully dynamic, real-time or daily optimisation which is key for ever changing operations such as roll on-off collections and skip transport.
Case study: Van Gansewinkel
In 2009, AMCS started working with Van Gansewinkel Group, the largest waste and recycling business in the Benelux countries and one of the top five in Europe. The company operates over 1000 vehicles and services more than 120,000 commercial customers. It is also the largest collector of municipal waste in the Netherlands and serves approx. 1.2 million households in 75 municipalities with a market share of over 55.6%.
Prior to initiating their route optimisation system, Van Gansewinkel Group was in a similar situation to the majority of businesses. Fixed routes were set manually, which could take several weeks and required a significant amount of driver involvement. In their industrial business, skip and roll on-off collections were planned intuitively using traditional systems. The result was that despite delivering a level of service well above the market average, the Group’s management team decided that there was the opportunity to both increase their levels of service and make significant savings as a result of increased operational efficiency.
The AMCS Route Planner software implemented by Van Gansewinkel in their commercial and industrial division uses powerful algorithms, which are tailored for the waste collection industry. By utilising the power of the optimisation engine, the planners are able to produce efficient and realistic routes for both high and low-density waste collection. The algorithms optimise routes by searching for the lowest cost solution while respecting the relevant service requirements and business rules.
The most popular planning restrictions and optimisation criteria can easily be accessed and changed by the planner. In addition, comprehensive configuration facilities make it possible to tailor the planning in detail.
Pilot
A pilot, which focused on the skip and roll on-off fleet, showed that there was great potential to cut both mileage and driving time, increasing the number of containers that could be serviced per hour. The pilot also highlighted some other untapped potential including increasing the ability to take empty containers direct to customers rather than in to stock, increasing the ability to stack containers on vehicles and trailers, supporting the service of locations with specific requirements e.g. city centres and improving the Group’s container stock control.
Following the full rollout of the system, across the business the Van Gansewinkel Group has realised a transport cost saving of up to 10% on its municipal fleet collections.
On the industrial side, a total cost reduction of 2.5% in its commercial waste collections and 3.2% in the skip and roll on-off f fleet was achieved. This has been done through increased productivity and a reduction in the size of the fleet, miles driven and driving time. The Group has also benefited from improved service levels and a subsequent reduction in issues raised by customers. The AMCS Route Planner system has also enabled the Group to better understand the profitability of new work, ensuring that the efficiency savings made continue to be maintained.
Whilst we are starting to see increased uptake of route optimisation software across both the UK commercial and municipal markets we believe that the rate of uptake looks set to increase as operators in both the commercial and municipal markets realise the opportunity to increase profitability and reduce costs. This is supported by the introduction of new ways for businesses to access technology, such as AMCS Route Optimisation Service. This outsourced service doesn’t require customers to install any software on their premises or train users on implementation and planning instead the focus is on providing route data which is then assessed and optimised to deliver greater efficiencies and cost savings.
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