 The HIPPOBAG™ national domestic and commercial waste collection and recycling service has become even “greener”, and at the same time more cost-effective, following the introduction of a routing and scheduling system from MapMechanics to plan the company’s vehicle movements from day to day.
When using the HIPPOBAG product and attached collection service, domestic or commercial users place waste in special, heavy-duty purpose-built recyclable polypropylene bags, which are left outside their premises for collection by the company. The affordable single-use bags can be bought at a range of retail stores, or for commercial customers directly through HIPPOWASTE™. A nationwide fleet of vehicles operating from a network of depots collects the bags and transports them to the most convenient waste transfer station, where typically over 80 per cent of the contents enter a recycling stream, and the bag itself is also passed on for recycling.
The company has grown rapidly over the past five years, especially on the commercial front, and started using another routing and scheduling system in a bid to streamline route planning. “It was a good product, but our requirements were simply too complex for it,” says chief executive James Bennett. “The software could take up to nine hours to finish an optimisation run, and we were only able to view one route at a time.”
The company therefore turned to MapMechanics, whose TruckStops system has a reputation for handling complex scheduling tasks. “We had heard that TruckStops was widely used in bulk milk collection operations, which can involve picking up from multiple location points and delivering on the same journey,” James Bennett says. “It sounded like exactly the kind of problem we have to deal with.”
In fact, he says, the HIPPOBAG requirement is if anything even more complicated than milk collection, since it can involve multiple pickup points and several delivery points on each journey. “But we soon realised TruckStops was going to be able to take this in its stride.”
Scheduling day-to-day transport operations is the most intensive task that a routing and scheduling system can undertake, especially when the call points are never the same from one day to the next. However, TruckStops is designed for this kind of application, and has been deployed widely on operations such as parcel services and home deliveries.
Routes for all the HIPPOBAG collections are scheduled centrally every day at the company’s head office in Fareham, Hampshire. Collection orders placed up until midday are passed to TruckStops from the company’s Compsoft order-processing system. The delivery rounds are then ready by mid-afternoon, and are sent out to the relevant depots and drivers.
TruckStops gives the planning team plenty of opportunity to fine-tune individual routes to take account of their local knowledge, and it also leaves them scope to prioritise urgent collections manually when required.
James Bennett pays tribute to the support provided by MapMechanics during the implementation process. “They were honest about what TruckStops could and couldn’t do, and once we’d got it fully bedded down, it worked exactly as they said it would.”
He adds: “We’re now able to schedule our operations much more quickly and efficiently on a least-cost basis that minimises journey times, reduces our carbon footprint and helps us improve our customer service.”
At the moment the routes prepared by TruckStops are delivered to depots and drivers by various traditional means, but in the next stage of streamlining, the information will be transmitted wirelessly to the drivers, who are being equipped with Psion Teklogix handheld terminals.
HIPPOWASTE is the trading name of Waste Management Systems Ltd. The company runs its own nationwide fleet of 40 collection vehicles from around a dozen depots (the network varies according to business demands). Most vehicles are 26-tonne gross rigid six-wheeler tipper-style vehicles, and there are also some 7.5-tonners for operations where space is more restricted. All carry hydraulic lorry-mounted cranes for picking up the HIPPOBAGs.
Domestic collections are usually made within a five-day window, while on the commercial side collections typically range from next day to a three-day window. The original service was retail-oriented, but currently the volume of commercial business has grown rapidly to exceed that of the domestic service with many leading construction, maintenance and installation companies now enjoying the benefits of this innovative product and service.
For further information about HIPPOWASTE please contact Amanda King on 0870 880 2430, or amanda.king@hippowaste.co.uk. www.hippowaste.co.uk |
