Blog March 2020 Updated December 2023

Intelligent Optimization increases agility of waste collection operations

Optimize static routes and dynamic orders to drive margins. In this rapidly changing world, customers are expecting a 24/7 responsive and user-friendly self-service demanding full operational insight and agility.

Call me back
Index
Martijn Schimmer

Martijn Schimmer

Intelligent Optimization Solution Advisor

Optimize static routes and dynamic orders to drive margins

In this rapidly changing world, customers are expecting a 24/7 responsive and user-friendly self-service demanding fulloperational insight and agility. Companies lacking responsiveness risk a fortune and put stress on their organization. Therefore, AMCS Intelligent Optimisation is supporting waste and recycling companies with an agile optimization platform for planning and optimizing static collection routes and dynamic orders .

  • Intelligent optimization enables waste and recycling companies to optimize each route
  • Dynamic scheduling reduces the number of routes driven decreasing the number of vehicles being deployed
  • The solution positively impacts the environment, reducing routes and CO2 emission from 5 to 25%
  • Vastly decreases planning and administration time between 25 to 75%, thus reducing costs by 10 to 15%
  • 5 to 15% fewer vehicles are needed to service customers
  • Real-time overview of operations contributes to business agility and improved customer service

Industry challenges and complexities with planning orders

Unique in its own way. In short, this sums up the waste industry when it comes to diversity in logistics and transport. The complexity is high for various reasons like the many waste types with their own characteristics, the different container types, the different job types, and the many possible ways of organizing them. Moreover, it concerns large numbers of orders which need to be planned in one go and at the same time schedule and re-plan if the execution of the orders changes.

The result of this is often manual and hands-on, rigid business processes with insufficient transparency. This makes it difficult to maintain a lean and efficient operation with low utilization of resources and vehicles. As an unwanted side effect, this can lead to low margins and profitability through inefficiencies and very poor insight into the cost and margins across the entire business and also on an individual customer order level. In addition to that, it is also tricky to meet customer expectations often resulting in poor customer service.

Intelligent route optimization supports complex industry-specific requirements

Waste and recycling companies are easily tackling this complexity with AMCS Intelligent Optimisation. This smart software both digitize and automate the complete order planning and dispatch processes supporting advanced and complex industry-specific route planning requirements. AMCS intelligent optimization covers every conceivable aspect of waste and recycling planning such as master route optimization for domestic and commercial waste, automated master route maintenance for churn management, and route optimization of skips and rolling off transport.

This is achieved through an intelligent optimization algorithm based on metaheuristics built to handle real-life challenges in the waste industry. For this, the algorithm is configured to combine a reduction of mileage, time, and cost with high-level route quality preferences and customer service levels. As a result, the AMCS Intelligent Optimisation solution is creating insight into order schedules, their execution, and performance to provide transparency and real-time service information and analytics to the organization and decision-makers.

The agile organization meets customers’ demands

AMCS Intelligent Optimisation is a one-of-a-kind dynamic planning platform providing full operational insight and agility. For instance, with merging operation and optimization into one and the same process. With this re-optimization is reacting instantly to operational changes providing an exact plan versus actuals and precise reporting. This results both in fully a transparent operation and real-time responsiveness providing best-in-class customer service levels without increasing cost or prices

Real-life challenges like time windows overlapping and vehicle capacity enable waste and recycling companies to real-time execution and on-the-fly re-optimization and dispatching or routes. With this, the promise time windows assure correct resources to the job offering the possibility for instant route and time slotting during customer requests.

Driving efficiencies, reducing costs, and mitigating safety risk

With AMCS Intelligent Optimisation waste and recycling companies benefit from a series of advantages like up-to-date service information and a total overview of the collection process during execution of orders. This is creating huge efficiencies in operations by streamlining and optimizing the waste collection process. A result there will be an increase in the lifts and orders completed per route and schedule, which is supporting operators to focus on driving margins and reducing associated route and order management costs.

The dynamic planning system is also driving margins while reducing costs for extra lifts caused by missed bins and cutting down hours of the planner and customer service representatives due to the constant availability of current information. With the integrated guided navigation as part of AMCS Mobile, it also allows faster onboarding of new drivers making their job easier being guided through the route and all the stops. Since the dynamic planning system is calculating the most efficient route and taking road safety into consideration it also mitigates the health and safety risk of drivers.

Contributing to the business drivers of the waste and recycling industry

Due to its strong focus on dynamic planning and an agile organization, AMCS Intelligent Optimisation contributes significantly to the business driver of the waste and recycling industry. If costs are concerned, intelligent optimization leads to a saving of 10 to 15% while at the same time 5 to 15% fewer vehicles need to be deployed to execute the same routes. In addition to that there is a 25 to 75% decrease in time spent on planning and administration, a 5 to 25% reduction in CO2 emissions, mileage, and driving time, and also significantly improved customer service and visit accuracy.

These positive business outcomes are supported by practical experience, for instance:

  • AES, Ireland: increased lift per route hour by 15% Suez, Benelux: increased lift per route hour by 5 to 10%
  • Twente Milieu, The Netherlands: increased lifts per route hour by 20 to 25%
  • Saver, The Netherlands: increased lift per route hour: 15 to 25%

AMCS Platform

The AMCS Platform offers a fully integrated and end-to-end portfolio of solutions to manage the waste and recycling lifecycle. Solutions include Enterprise Management, Intelligent Optimisation, Mobile Workforce, Vehicle Technology, Digital Engagement, and AMCS Analytics. These industry-specific solutions are developed to support the AMCS Platform strategy focussing on driving revenue growth, margin expansion, operational efficiency, and sustainability. AMCS lives up to those words with a product and development team of around 200 people, currently investing 20% of overall turnover in product development.

Share this on:

ready to see what AMCS can do for you?

The AMCS Intelligent Route Optimization combines dynamic route planning and real-time optimization to increase efficiency and improve profits.

Request a demo

Webinar on Demand: The Power of Route Optimization

Gain insight into how to turn your complex routing plans into an on-demand streamlined process without the time consuming manual tasks.

Watch Webinar

Resources

Blog
mastering fleet inventory management with AMCS Fleet Maintenance
Blog
what is the corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDDD)?
Event
Performance Sustainability in Action
View other resources

sign up for newsletter

Stay up to date by signing up to our newsletter now!