"You wouldn't believe what this system can do - everything but comb your hair."

By David Engle

Solid waste management is riding a technological wave toward full integration of truck scale software with business accounting. Data streams that were once disconnected are being networked, and information processing is rapidly reaching automation. The current crop of software allows virtually any municipality or franchise operator to gain far greater management control on a wider scale and more affordably than ever before.

Meanwhile, weigh scale technology, reflected in both hardware and software, is evolving too. Not only are weights and loads being logged in quickly and without paper tickets, but an invaluable array of data is being gathered too: on drivers, daily routes, dump trip frequencies, and customer trends or, as one manager put it, "Who is hauling what trash for whom, and what routes are they taking?" Remote scale sites can send the data into the stream in the main office to provide powerful reporting, even in real time: truck location, truck activity, load status, and virtually anything else that is required. The ultimate benefits are obvious: greater operational efficiency with lower costs, better decision-making data, and improved customer service.

One very typical example comes from St. Lawrence County, NY, which handles 26,000 tpy of solid waste. Soon after installing high-end software in 2002, the county began saving the $25,000 it had spent annually to rekey its daily dump-ticket data. This duplication of effort is probably the most common inefficiency incurred by disjointed systems. Automation minimizes annoying typos and math errors and often unearths revenues that were falling through the cracks. A franchise operator in Oregon observes, "The more you're able to keep control of all systems, the less likely you'll be to lose money along the way." A scale manager for a large municipality raved about the marvels of gaining greater consistency. Formerly, he says, "we were relying on our weight scale operators and drivers to communicate effectively - but that didn't always happen. Sometimes it was a language barrier or simply an ŒI don't care' attitude." But now, he says, "at the end of the day you're guaranteed absolute accurate data and reporting." Integration of data from multiple transfer stations also added more audit trails and accuracy checkpoints and has elevated the level of accountability systemwide.

Reporting Features: Management Power Tools

Get ready, too, for almost endless ways to access and massage data. Easily produced reports and bar charts for each account are becoming routine. St. Lawrence County Director of Solid Waste Karl O. Bender exults in running "all sorts of queries.Š We're now able to look more closely at the tip fees to see where customers are.Š We are finding out when our busiest hours are, when our slowest days were, how much we're making and where, the average tonnage by day, by hour, and by site so we can modify our hours of operation" and save money. Operators also have ready access to data for better planning, labor utilization, marketing, vehicle dispatching, regulatory compliance, expansion decisions, landfill reports - you name it. As the manager of a midsize county recycling center put it, "You wouldn't believe what this system can do - everything but comb your hair." Operators are able to satisfy the reporting wish lists of crew supervisors, customer service representatives, and fleet maintenance managers who need to know where the trucks and crews are, what they are doing, and where they will go next. Finally, the time needed to issue reports will be cut to a fraction. Complex landfill summaries, for example, which might have taken weeks to pull together, will be churned out in days or hours.

Bumps Along This Highway

For all the gains realized with software upgrades, there also are technical and operational hurdles. For one thing, municipalities face a problem with their existing truck scale program, generally written over time by countless regional developers. Many waste managers admit they would only consider an upgrade path offered by their current vendor and are reluctant to switch to new integrated systems even if they look good. Certainly the disruptions of moving to automation will be eased if the current scale software is produced by one of the new-generation technology leaders. If not, managers might wait months for a major upgrade - if it ever arrives. The alternative is to scrap the current scale software and find a new vendor and product. In selecting new vendors, municipalities must consider whether the best technological products are accompanied by substantial tech support, software maintenance and training, and so on to new customers, especially several states or time zones away. Trade-offs between standardization and customizability must meet the municipality's needs.

Still another factor is a system's hardware requirements. As with any major software installation, the existing paid-for PC base might not be powerful enough to run it. Memory, processing speed, and peripherals might need major upgrading. In addition, the torrent of data coming in from remote scales, wireless field devices, and so on might easily choke an underpowered database. One medium-size municipality reports that high-volume material recovery facility (MRF) transactions made its Microsoft Access database "crash and burn"; it was eventually replaced with Oracle (which has proven successful). The manager of a large city related the same experience.

Other questions to be pondered: Will the existing network be large enough and fully compatible? Should you reconsider your server-client configuration because several of the new products are Web-based or nonresident intranet-style access? Should you stay with Windows or other current operating system or scrap it? Remaining in your current environment might preclude, or make more difficult, the integration of several valuable but incompatible inputting devices.

The number and types of inputting devices must be considered. Rely on mouse and keyboard input or enable some handheld devices, automated wireless signals, or combinations thereof? The same consideration must go to outputs: Should trucks be equipped with onboard telemetry-sending systems (now affordably available)? Should drivers get text messaging readers? And what communication protocol will tie this together? Radio frequency transmitter and serial cables are used at many weigh stations, but digital cell phone signaling and other wireless technologies are viable too.

A number of vendors have already helped municipalities maneuver through these issues and can furnish guidance. Also, not all decisions need to happen at once: Modules and components can be added piece by piece. Phased implementation will probably be preferred for larger municipalities, which will realize more dramatic results in the long run but must expend considerably more planning and retooling effort up-front. Implementation of major integrated upgrades can occur quite routinely and affordably in most municipalities.

Here are four snapshots of product implementations at a cross-section of locations, with some discussion of the decision-making that preceded them. (We talked to more than a dozen industry sources, including small and large municipalities, franchise holders, and software developers.) Several cities were already running new systems quite successfully and had found the implementation relatively easy. Others encountered more complex issues and were either still exploring their options or slowly implementing them. All were tuned in to the new technology, its promise, and its challenges.

Charleston County, SC (Population: 312,000)

Just as we phoned her, Computer Support Specialist Mary Dellucci was wrapping up bid specs for the solid waste recycling department's latest and greatest upgrade. She is shopping "for a fully integrated modular system that can do it all," she says, in terms of accounting - all kinds of billables, cash receipts, checks, credit accounts, prepays, recurring accounts, and so on. She also wants to track and identify recyclable types rather than simply bill for the net trash weights. Arriving trucks and their loads need to be categorized, and capturing assorted customer-service and productivity data will be necessary too. In fact, she says, "this won't be just an upgrade, but an entirely new system." The program she selects must be modular so that elements can be added upgraded in stages. And she strongly prefers modules that are specialized for their functions: a MRF management module "should really do recycling," rather than being a generic weighing program, and likewise with the landfill, transfer station, and so on. "It gets really convoluted," she adds.

This combination is proving to be a tall order. Dellucci hasn't yet found an off-the-shelf program for doing truck weights, productivity, and recycling content. Several vendors have offered to build to her specs from the ground up. Recalling an experience with this route a decade ago, she says. "I'll never, ever do that again," adding, "It's not really necessary" when enough programs seem to be sufficiently customizable in the packaged form. Dellucci has whittled down a list of four or five contenders, and more were expected to forward during Charleston's Request for Proposal and review process this spring. "Anybody can bid on it, but they have to meet really tight specifications," she says. "It will have to do it all."

Toronto, ON (Population: 2,481,494)

Canada's largest city owns about 450 trash trucks, and its seven transfer stations handle hundreds of private-sector haulers. In 2002, Toronto began phasing in a comprehensive upgrade called Geoware, developed locally by PC Automation in Waterloo, ON. Geoware has been running successfully in a several dozen municipalities, mostly in Canada, and a few small and medium-size United States cities.

Supervisor of Weigh Scale Operations David Carter says, near term, his goal is to automate processing of the city's trash fleet so that scale operators can focus on private-sector haulers. Long term, he's aiming to capture and manage extensive data about waste, customer trends, productivity, and vehicles.

A trial implementation at one weigh scale began last year; Carter anticipates rolling out Geoware at his other six stations and their MRFs starting this year. He had already installed and tested the full administrative module for bookkeeping and reporting. "It does work very well," he maintains. "It's great on the technology end."

Geoware's approach to achieving high-volume automation is the industry standard in that as much information as possible is pre-entered on truckloads and customers, minimizing the tasks left to do at the scales. "By the time a truck arrives, we already know where the vehicle has gone, what it's picked up, and who is on crew," Carter says.

Turnaround time on the trial scale is down to about a minute or two, and this end of the process is also automated. Toronto trucks now carry small wireless transmitters that send the weight, timestamp, and other data to the scale operator's receiving antenna. Slower keyboard-and-mouse entry is almost eliminated, which Carter thinks is a big plus. This wireless information is then sent to headquarters, where it is linked to the pre-entered account data to complete the transaction. Rekeying of dump ticket data is eliminated, but the scale-house operator (and others) can override or modify data, if need be.

Eventually Carter will be extracting voluminous management reports, including some in real time. "Hauling costs per ton, per load, per route, per driver, or any other way we want" will be available from the Oracle database with a few keystrokes. To improve human resource management, Toronto is adding its own customized time-entry and time-activity components. These will track and accrue employee activity hour by hour as opposed to logging only the undifferentiated eight- or 10-hour workday. "We're looking to take the technology a lot further than where it is now," Carter sums up, "so that at the end of the day we can have a virtually unlimited number of management reports."

Santa Barbara City and County (Population: 92,325 and 399,347, Respectively)

Santa Barbara - based Marborg Industries, a small waste franchise holder with 50 employees, does trash pickup for this environmentally sensitive coastal community and runs a construction-and-demolition recycling facility. Late last year, Marborg upgraded its weigh scale program, called Soft-Pak, to a fully integrated accounting and report-generating version called Scale Pak. Implementation brought only "the standard snafus" inherent in any software change, reports Derek Carlson, Marborg's business manager, and was otherwise uneventful.

Almost immediately Carlson found that the new billing and reporting module meshed "in a very sophisticated manner," giving him detailed account tracking down to general ledger codes. "We now know where every load is coming from by a precise address," he says. Data about the content or source are permanently associated with a unique dump ticket. This provides him with a level of detail that would have been "logistically impossible if it wasn't automated," he notes, especially if it were reliant on the rather episodic style of manual inputting by busy scale operators. Scale Pak's accounting module also allows voiding of dump tickets, which reverses the charges on the ledger and automatically updates the landfill reports in one step.

As with the other integrated programs, account and job-order data are mostly pre-entered, including routing, service level, load volume in gallons, jurisdictions, and truck data. Content can also be preapportioned, in gallons, to reflect multiple franchise jurisdictions being carried in one haul.

Each incoming job request is initially assigned a work-order number issued to the driver. When he and his load arrive at the scale house, he gives it to the operator for keying in and confirms the content; built-in safeguards prevent errors, but the system also allows revisions and new fields.

Customers receive fully itemized billing statements and can get backup documentation. Data refinements can also break out solid waste and recyclables, per jurisdictions. Customers have been expecting this level of accuracy from Marborg, says Carlson, and the new software makes it easy.

His advice to other solid waste managers: "You can make the process easier by thinking through all the info you need to gather, so you won't have to backtrack and add something you forgot."

Rural Oregon (Population: 1,006,964)

Western Oregon Waste (WOW), based in McMinnville, OR, holds franchises serving 15 jurisdictions comprising 25,000 pickup accounts. Late last year WOW installed Scale Pak on an IBM AS 400 server to link scale data from three weigh stations and a total of 45 access points. Information Systems Manager Lisa Rodgers reports that she's still debugging the install but that it has gone well overall; she adds that the vendor, PC Scales, has been good at solving problems.

Benefits include the usual list: cost- and error-avoidance by eliminating rekeying, quick and limitless account reporting, data refinement, and management summaries.

More of a novelty is WOW's use of Scale Pak to perform automated dispatching. Cell phone technology replaces an outdated radio tower that was plagued with signal dead spots. Now drivers carry cell phones. The main office computer auto-dials to dispatch them to the next pickup site. If the message goes unread, the system keeps trying. Once the call is received and acknowledged, the system logs the time and status. "That's been very, very effective tool for us," says Rodgers. "It's much easier and more efficient."

In March, Rodgers began evaluating an adjunct product called Routeware, which outfits trash trucks with global positioning systems, onboard computers, and wireless signals to help the office fine-tune routing and management. The system tracks vehicle location and activity, including idle time and unscheduled pickups. According to the Portland, OR, company, Routeware can meld with many other vendors' route management programs to eliminate the need for paper route logs and double entry of data. Reporting features can give a reading on driver performance, route efficiency, and on costs by route, by customer, by mileage, or by ton. "That's the newest and greatest technology we've found," says Rodgers.

Darien, CT (Population: 19,607)

Our final stop found perhaps one of the earliest implementations of a fully automated system "in a box," for a residential community with almost no commercial waste. However, Darien Assistant Director of Public Works Darren Oustafine, P.E., discovered that he could use the software in unexpected ways, not only for trash control but for several other town functions too: street cleaning operations; tracking of drainage system pickup volumes; verifying deliveries of sand and salt for deicing; keeping tabs on leaf pickup; measuring road sweepings; verifying asphalt, gravel, and topsoil deliveries to the roads and landscaping departments; and even helping to implement new stormwater requirements of the Environmental Protection Agency. The town runs a waste composting facility, selling the compost, and the software helps there too. "All the bills are generated automatically," Oustafine notes, adding, "We're able to do a better job of tracking how much we pick up in everything we do."

After three years of operation with PC Scales Inc. (headquartered in Oxford, PA), the only bugs are rare glitches with one of the two wireless links; if either goes down, it is usually fixed within the day, says Oustafine.

One welcome feature, he points out, is the ability to generate a statement and customer invoice on a moment's notice, for the sake of landscapers and other walk-in accounts. "We just look at the screen and say, ŒYou owe us this much.' It's really simple."

Implementation was problem-free and included a couple of days for a shakedown run to ensure full network compatibility and a few more for staff training in the office and scale house. Darien maintains a phone support contract.

Of the yearly report demanded of him by the Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority, Oustafine recalls the "bad old days" prior to automation: "What an albatross it used to be to try [to figure] out how many plastic cans you took out of here, how many tons of this every month, and to break it down, going through reams of records each year Š tons of records." Now his staff can print a report covering mandatory recyclables and breaking down tires, wood, brush, grass, waste oil, Freon recovery, glass, plastics, food containers, mixed-paper newspaper, and cardboard. "And it comes out by month, by waste type, whether incoming or outgoing," he says. "I never, ever would want to go back."

La Mesa, CA­based writer David Engle is a frequent contributor to Forester Communications publications.

MSW - July/August 2003