The tendency of growing cities, rising traffic and economic restraints has increased the need for higher sustainability and life quality. The overall goal is to to manage cities and populated areas as ""intelligently"" as possible to provide a better life and operate economically. Efficient routing systems for waste disposal play a major role in that matter.

Climent Vilatersana, General Manager of MOBA Spain, has implemented numerous routing and and waste disposal systems for multiple years, ranging from mega cities to small counties. His expertise is well-known and widely appreciated within the industry.

I asked him to give us a better understanding about routing systems and why they can help any city, county and waste disposal company to increase efficiency and save money.

Here are my questions and his answers:

What are the components and requirements of a good routing system?

Well, what exactly is a routing system? Wikipedia defines: “Routing is the process of selecting best paths in a network”. That sounds pretty good at first sight!

However, there are so many different logistic services which involve transportation. Each one of them has its own different particularities and complexities. Therefore, logistic requirements for an international courier are not the same as for a taxi driver or a waste collection service. Although some of the technologies used have a common base, each service will still require its own application and tools. In other words, routing software that works very well for an international courier is useless for a waste collection company because qualifications are way too different.

A waste collection company usually manages not only the collection of bins but also other services such as city cleaning and urban maintenance. There are essential differences between each of these logistic needs. For bin collection, the logistic requirements are not the same for collecting bins in a door-to-door system (mostly used in Germany and North-European countries), in a municipal container system (mostly used in Southern countries like Italy or Spain) or in an industrial collection system. Nevertheless of all these differences, waste collection companies need a single technological solution as a routing system to handle efficiently all their services.

What are the solutions?

Software obviously plays a major part in routing systems for waste collection and city cleaning. Additionally, vehicles and containers need to be equipped with the following components to measure real service data successfully:

• Equipment for vehicles: GPS/GPRS, Onboard computers, RFID bin identification, onboard scales, remote keyboards, activity sensors, chassis FMS connection,…
• Equipment for bins/containers: transponders, bin level sensors
• Software Application: Software with GIS tools for route optimization

Fig 1. Vehicle Equipment

Fig 2. Software with GIS application

The main components and requirements needed for best functionality will then differ for each application and vehicle type:

Fig 3. Table Technology by Application

Who do they fit best for in company size and application?

All. The price of the vehicle equipment is calculated per vehicle. Therefore, the investment is proportional to the number of vehicles; so are the savings. In the past, small companies could not afford a huge investment due to very expensive software licenses, IT infrastructure and resources needed.

Today, the state of art routing applications are full web- hosted in a private cloud and provided as a Service (SaaS, Software as a Service) through monthly fees per use. With this model, there is no investment in licenses, IT infrastructure, and companies do not need additional IT resources. Only a standard Internet connection is required. Therefore, even companies with very small fleets can enjoy these solutions.

The SaaS model has many other advantages included such as maintenance, cartography and software feature updates, secure access from anywhere, power consumption savings and many more.

From an application standpoint, to organize routes depending on filling levels (either manually entering the level, by weighing systems or by bin level sensors), it fits best for collection in industrial and rural areas, where vehicles must travel long distances. In cities, it makes sense to organize with filling level data in the case of underground containers collection, due to the effort, time, fuel consumption and traffic problems which can be saved if they are collected only when they are full.

What are the benefits and savings?

There are many benefits and savings with the use of routing systems. The main ones are:

• Less fuel consumption due to less distance traveled and less bins/containers lifted.
• Less fuel consumption means also less pollution going to the atmosphere.
• Less distance traveled means less traffic problems, too.
• Traveling less distance and emptying less bins, mean less working hours, another important cost saving.

There are several more savings through lower vehicle maintenance requirements (tires, oil, repair parts, so less waste too!)

• When using filling level sensors for optimizing waste collection routes, over-filling of bins/containers can be avoided. It results in a cleaner city and big savings: over-filled containers are especially costly when collection is done with automated side loaders because there is only one driver in the cabin. When a bin is over-filled, another special vehicle and team has to be sent out to clean the area.
• Providing customer information: when a company has a routing system in operation, services like real time information is available. Therefore, immediate feedback can be given to customer inquiries with high added-value to clients.
• Higher driver productivity: because it sends a clear message to employees that work efficiency and route optimization is a high company priority. By using onboard electronics, data from vehicle chassis (FMS) can be easily accessed and made available. These data are essential to improve driving quality. Better driving habits can increase overall savings.
• Another benefit is the fast reaction time for detecting and solving road incidents: all machines in a fleet can be alerted immediately through a traffic controller when there is for example bulky waste, gardening waste or any other incident by using an onboard computer or a push button. Less traffic jams and a cleaner city are the advantages.
• Companies using this advanced technologies usually have a better public image which makes them more competitive in the end. Opportunities for new contracts and/or winning more tenders than competitors (who do not use advanced technologies) with increasing sales are the obvious benefits.

Today, operating a sophisticated routing system is still a way to differentiate a company from competition. The trend, however, in a lot of countries is increasing rapidly requiring companies to use these tools for its obvious benefits. Companies that will not make the step forward, simply, will be left behind.

A lot of big cities are currently developing their strategic plan to become a “Smart City”. The economic crisis in developed countries and big pollution problems in emerging places have created the need for cities to become more efficient. The solution is to manage cities in a more intelligent way.

The Smart City concept is based on being more efficient and sustainable, resulting in a better quality of life for the citizens. The pillar to become a Smart City is the use of Technology. Routing systems obviously play a key part. New released tenders are starting to require the use of such systems.

My advice to any waste collection company is to get on board now! In my opinion, there is no other option and the earlier companies start as more they will be able to differentiate themselves from their competition.

fig4.jpg

The cities of Sant Cugat in Spain and Cascais in Portugal are two examples with their success stories. When they implemented their routing systems and improved their processes, they both saved more than 20% of the costs of the service in the first year of operation. Within the very first few months of use they were both be able to get their payback out their systems!

What are the obstacles to overcome?

I see two main obstacles:

• The first one is the investment itself. Although the system has a fast payback, spending money is always an initial commitment that has to be made.
• The second one is technological complexity. In waste collection, there is a big diversity of collection systems with a high number of exceptions. Variety of trucks, containers, narrow and wide streets, bins in both sides of the street, traffic, are just a few examples. Each city has its own degree of complexity.

Some of these parameters are available and can be handled by current applications. Although the algorithms are very complex, there is no solution available to fully solve automatically ALL situations.

The preferred outcome would be, of course, that an application could be designed in a way that all routes for a fleet could be optimized by only pressing a single button on the computer. Unfortunately, this is not possible today and probably will not be in a very long time. However, current routing systems work well and are excellent tools to help the design of optimized routes, supporting the expertise of people who prepare them. Still, some human brain is needed!

How easily can routing systems be installed?

The software side is simple to configure and set. All the work can be done remotely by experts sitting in an office. Training for operators is required but this does not take more than one day and some remote support afterwards.

The installation of equipment in the vehicles is more or less complex depending on the quantity of components. It can vary from a few hours for a GPS/GPRS solution to three or four days per vehicle when a vehicle is equipped with a complete system with onboard computer, bin identification and weighing.

The time consuming part is mainly the installation of transponders and sensors inside containers. The installation of each container is done in a couple of minutes. The quantity of the overall containers can make it time-consuming. In case of new containers, the devices can be installed at the factory.

Waste companies should consider that in order to get full advantage out of their routing system, that some of their existing processes will change. Therefore, after installation, companies will need some months to adapt internally.

What are the costs?

Prices for software as a service are based on monthly basis fees per vehicle and range in general from 15€ till 50€ depending on the modules, quantity of data to handle and countries/region.

Vehicle equipment start in average around 500€ per vehicle when there is only GPS/GPRS till around 7.500€ when there is a complete system with GPS/GPRS, onboard computer and RFID bin identification involved. These prices may also vary depending on systems, countries/region and provider.

Transponders installed in the bins cost usually around 3€ or 4€. The price range may also vary here depending on application, provider and country/region. By adding onboard scales and/or bin level sensors, the costs are significantly higher.

It is also highly recommended to contract a maintenance service to assure the extension of warranty for components, repair service and a fast reaction time (24 or 48 hours). The cost of this type of maintenance service can add up to around 10% of the equipment investment per year. Routing systems seem to be very affordable compared to the cost of a complete service collection (trucks, containers, human resources,). In average it is usually much less than 1% of the overall costs involved with a great potential of savings and benefits.

What do you think about routing systems for garbage disposal?