Route Optimization Case Studies of C2Logix Clients
Case Studies
The following organizations have used FleetRoute and/or TourSolver technology to improve effeciency:
Public Sector:
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Emerald Coast Utilities Authority, Florida
• Miami-Dade County, Florida
• City of Edmond, Oklahoma
• City of Baltimore, Maryland
• Atlantic Coast Utilities Authority, New Jersey
• City of Stillwater, Oklahoma
• City and County of San Francisco, California
• City of San Antonio, Texas
Private Sector:
• Mill Valley Refuse Service, Inc., California
• Knight Waste Services, Inc., Texas
• Hunter Douglas Northeast
• Pinnacle Waste Services, Maryland
• Red River Waste Solutions, Texas
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
C2Logix announced today that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has tasked the firm with the expansion of the CDC Stockpile Routing Web Portal, providing route optimization technology for nationwide emergency response planning after overwhelming initial demand. The number of users was expected to be 50 to 60, but after the first six months, it has grown to nearly 400. As part of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) Program, the CDC offers the portal, developed by C2Logix, to federal, state and local government emergency managers. The routing technology optimizes the rapid and efficient transport and distribution of critical medicine and supplies in the event of an emergency, such as a terrorist attack.
The Portal is a central route simulation and optimization decision-making tool, featuring a web-based version of the powerful, yet easy-to-use TourSolver route optimization software. The software has been set-up for the unique needs of emergency response, i.e., the need to distribute the materials as fast as possible versus as cheaply as possible, as done by traditional route optimization applications. The customized tool enables planners to quickly generate optimized routes to distribute supplies from central storage facilities to multiple local points of distribution in communities. In addition to allowing the generation of optimized routes based on basic information about the fleet and delivery points, TourSolver provides the ability to simulate multiple scenarios and allow planners to quickly see the impact on the overall distribution operation.
Launched in November 2007, the portal has been positively received with nearly 400 emergency managers signing up for access, nearly 200 attending two webinars, and over 500 attending workshops in Portland, OR; Charleston, SC; Dallas, TX; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; and Providence, RI.
As part of the expanded effort, C2Logix will deploy three additional servers to meet the substantial demand for TourSolver; update the portal with streamlined user workflow; implement a User Forum to enhance support; and provide additional support to users.
“The response to the Routing Portal has been extremely positive and prompted the CDC’s decision to ramp up the effort,” noted Kevin Callen, C2Logix Chief Technology Officer. “The additional capacity will allow for more users; allow for the states to conduct scenario testing; be used in exercises and training; and in an actual emergency. The bottom line is that the quadrupling of the technology implementation will further assist local governments in quickly and efficiently transporting medicines or equipment if the need unfortunately arises.”
The CDC, headquartered in Atlanta, GA, is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, which Congress charged with establishing the SNS in 1999. The SNS is a national repository of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical materials. It was built to respond to large-scale public health emergencies or acts of terrorism.
Emerald Coast Utilities Authority, Florida
WasteBid.com assisted the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority (ECUA), based in Pensacola, Florida, with the implementation of the FleetRoute™ route optimization software under a sub-contract with Gershman, Brickner & Bratton, Inc. ECUA, with its fleet of 80 trucks, provides solid waste and yard trash collection to 65,000 residential properties and commercial businesses within the unincorporated areas of Escambia County.
ECUA embarked on the implementation to balance their routes, reduce overtime, and increase collection efficiency and, being in a high-growth area, make integration of new clients to existing routes easier.
WasteBid prepared the Authority’s data for use with FleetRoute™, and our staff has been trained to use the software and create/update routes in-house.
ECUA is utilizing FleetRoute™ for both their residential and commercial routes. FleetRoute™ makes route creation easier and more efficient than manual routing, especially given ECUA’s high-growth environment.
In late 2008, the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority (ECUA) in Pensacola, FL, added 13,000 customers, made changes to trash collection services, and added recycling collection services. With the challenge of these upcoming major changes, and with very little time to react, ECUA selected GBB and technology partner C2Logix to assist in streamlining the operation, reducing costs, and ensuring a smooth transition. The fast-tracked implementation of the FleetRoute™ route optimization software resulted in balanced routes, reduced overtime, increased trash/recycling collection efficiency, and easier integration of new clients to existing routes.
“We were facing a great challenge, and GBB’s route optimization project team greatly contributed to making the transition easier and successful,” noted Randy Rudd, ECUA’s Director of Sanitation. “We are now utilizing FleetRoute™ for both residential and commercial routes. The software makes route creation easier and more efficient than manual routing, especially given our high-growth environment.”
ECUA, with its fleet of 80 trucks, provides solid waste and yard trash collection to 65,000 residential properties and commercial businesses within the unincorporated areas of Escambia County, Florida. Near the end of 2008, ECUA won the contract for the northern area of Escambia County, adding an additional 13,000 customers. At this time, ECUA also changed to weekly trash collection from twice per week pickup and added weekly recycling collection. The GBB Project Team was able to incorporate the new customers, set up weekly recycling, and make the change to weekly collection in just over a month.
Since recycling collection was new to ECUA’s customers, GBB added new customers and updated the recycling routes on a weekly basis for a month, with approximately
4,000 customers added each week. GBB then prepared the ECUA’s data for use with FleetRoute™, and staff was trained to use the software and create/update routes in-house. GBB also implemented the Route Looker-Upper™, a web-based tool allowing residents to look up their new trash collection date.
Miami-Dade County, Florida
Miami-Dade County, FL, selected Gershman, Brickner & Bratton, Inc., and WasteBid as a subcontractor, to provide FleetRoute™ route optimization software and project consulting services. Miami-Dade is a highly populated jurisdiction, with a residential curbside recycling program serving nearly 300,000 homes. The purpose of the project was to help develop new routes for the County’s 75 new automated collection trucks and to increase collection efficiency. The Service Bureau provided new routes with balanced workdays, decreased overtime, and optimized travel times/trips to the disposal facilities. The County now plans to get trained on the software to internalize the routing tasks. The County is also a former RouteSmart customer.
City of Edmond, Oklahoma
The C2Logix FleetRoute Team was sub-contracted by consulting firm, Gershman, Brickner & Bratton, Inc., for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma to completely re-route the residential collection system in this city of 70,000 people, encompassing 85 square miles. The City provides weekly automated collection to 22,000 residences using one or two 105-gallon carts. This project was done on a service bureau basis as the most cost effective approach for Edmond. Under the service bureau approach, the City did not have to buy and maintain the FleetRoute routing software but contracted for finished routes. The deliverables included: (1) detailed route path maps, (2) street-by-street travel direction reports, and (3) a customer sequence listing.
The City of Edmond provided the FleetRoute Team, working under Gershman, Brickner & Bratton, Inc., with a GIS database with all customers’ addresses matched to the streets on which they belong, with the side of the street identified and a customer ID. The City also identified, by ID, those customers that were exceptions to the norm, such as: (1) customers serviced on the side street (not the front street where the house address matches to – a so-called corner customer) and (2) customers that require service times other than the default value. Service time is defined as the elapsed time from the moment the truck stops in front of a customer until the moment the truck begins to move again. Actual scale weight data was used to assess the set-out size for customers. FleetRoute was enhanced to control u-turns on major roadways. Also, high traffic areas and schools were routed so the collection occurs at specific times during the day. Narrow streets that disallowed the trucks to turn around were increased in travel time and displayed as pull-in, pull-out map reports.
The results were a reduction in the number of routes from 40 to 30 resulting in significant operational savings.
In Task One, the FleetRoute Team developed new optimized routes, using the FleetRoute™ Route Optimization software, that didn’t utilize the current collection day of week. Task Two compared the new routes with routes optimized for current collection day of week. The outcome of the second task was that the efficiency improvements were minimal from entirely switching the current collection day of week to new collection days. Thus, it was deemed that new routes should be developed that follow the current collection days, without sacrificing the time balance between the routes, i.e., maximizing the efficiency of all of the routes. These routes maintained the current collection day of week, as closely as possible, while keeping the routes balanced by time. This new task was the third task for the routing of the City’s automated trash collection. The goal in this routing was to allow some modifications of collection days, but this was minimized to the greatest extent possible.
Relevant information from the City’s Tower waste management software (e.g., number of containers, container size, current day of week service, etc.) was imported and merged into the FleetRoute customer database by the FleetRoute Team using the Automated Route Updater. The City arranged with Transcomp to produce the import/export file with current account data. An updated Tower file, created by FleetRoute, was returned to the City reflecting the new routes.
City of Baltimore, Maryland
C2Logix provided assistance, as a subcontractor, to the Northeast Maryland Disposal Authority (NMWDA) to re-routing the City of Baltimore (City) residential trash and recycling collection system. The NMWDA and the Baltimore City Department of Public Works contracted the re-routing as a Service Bureau project, This approach provided the City with optimized routes to implement allowing the substantial cost savings of over $6 million to be realized as quickly as possible. The City, with an estimated population of 630,000 and 200,000 households serviced by Department of Public Works trucks and crews, previously collected refuse twice per week and recycling bi-weekly utilizing approximately 119 trucks operating six days per week.
The Service Bureau project included refining the geocoding of the City’s customers on the GIS maps and geocoding and identification of customers serviced in alleys. In addition, the street centerline data was expanded to add alleys and travel attributes (such as speeds, one-ways, overpasses/underpasses, etc.) that was not included in the City GIS baseline. City historical service data was used for set-out weights. Field observations were also conducted to assess service performance.
Five alternative scenarios of new routes, collection days, workday lengths, recycling participation and equipment allocation were analyzed for their impact on operating costs. The alternative scenarios were presented to the NMWDA, Mayor, City management and union officials. The scenario for once-per-week refuse and recycling collection, referred to as One Plus One by the City, was selected and successfully implemented in 2009. The new routes utilized 85 collection vehicles, four days per week, with ten hour shifts per day.
C2Logix combined veteran experience in managing waste operations and extensive knowledge in utilizing route optimization software, provided a solution to the City that increased service levels for recycling while significantly reducing costs.
Atlantic Coast Utilities Authority
The Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA) selected the FleetRoute™ Service Bureau for a pilot project that consisted in developing optimized draft collection routes for Ocean Township with approximately 3,000 households, and complete a preliminary collection cost analysis based on the routes developed. Following the pilot Project, the ACUA elected to purchase a license of the FleetRoute™ route optimization software, including data set up services, training/workshop and maintenance, in order to have the ability to generate and modify routes in-house.
The ACUA is a public agency that provides recycling, trash, and other collection services to Atlantic County and neighbouring municipalities with its fleet of approximately 60 trucks. Areas serviced include the popular casino destination of Atlantic City and the Township of Ocean and Ocean City, NJ. Routing was previously done manually and was becoming increasingly tedious. This prompted ACUA to look for solutions that would increase productivity and led to the selection of FleetRoute™.
City of Stillwater, Oklahoma
The City of Stillwater’s Waste Management Division, serving 15,000 residential units, did a six-month automated collection pilot program in an effort to explore the benefits and challenges of transitioning from manual to automated residential collection service. A cross-section of the community was chosen for this pilot program, consisting of approximately 2,650 residential units divided into four different routes. The City selected the FleetRoute™ route optimization software for the project which consisted in the development of initial routes by the Service Bureau, followed by installation, set up, and training of City staff to do future rerouting in-house using FleetRoute™.
City and County of San Francisco, California
In July 2009, the City and County of San Francisco, California, selected C2Logix's FleetRoute Route Optimization software to re-route the cities street sweeper routes. C2Logix set up a custom interface to allow the city to use their GIS street centerline file as well as their database that listed the no parking restrictions for every street in the city.
The San Francisco DPW is responsible for cleaning more than 150,000 curb miles and removing about 24,000 tons of litter and debris from the City’s streets annually. The DPW was faced with the problem where over the last three decades, mechanical sweeping routes had been developed in a fragmented and petition-based manner, resulting in inefficient, confusing, and unbalanced routes. The DPW does not have the ability to efficiently map and comprehensively analyze existing mechanical sweeping routes and the current manual process for creating, maintaining, and updating mechanical sweeping routes is time consuming and does not allow for any optimization of vehicle travel path nor balancing of routes. FleetRoute™ will provide a systematic and efficient way of routing areas with a variety of sweeping frequencies, time and days of service, among other benefits. It will also help the DPW in redesigning and optimizing its mechanical sweeping routes to find more efficient travel paths, reduce costs, while improving planning, customer service, and productivity of its resources. The project is currently underway.
City of San Antonio
The City of San Antonio selected C2Logix under a sub-contract with Gershman, Brickner & Bratton, Inc. to purchase its FleetRoute™ Route Optimization Software and provide a collection route optimization solution. As the City is in the process of converting manual collection routes to automated collection routes, it is also being proactive by seeking to maximize collection efficiencies, reduce operating costs, and design balanced collection routes along with the introduction of the new fleet.
C2Logix set up the City’s data in FleetRoute™ and provide hands-on training/workshop to enable City staff to conduct the routing in-house through a web-based interface.
As described by David W. McCary, Director of the City’s Solid Waste Management Department: “We are excited about our routing software opportunity with FleetRoute™. We are currently completing the final phase of our conversion to an automated waste collection system, so it seemed only natural to continue our efficiency momentum by incorporating a route optimization solution. As routes are reviewed and optimized, we believe there will be benefits for both our customers and employees.”
The Solid Waste Management Department of the City provides garbage, recycling, and brush collection services to approximately 340,000 residential customers residing within the 512 square mile City limits. It is among the largest cities providing solid waste collection by City crews.
San Antonio, the Alamo City, is often regarded as the Heart of Texas for its illustrious past and its cosmopolitan present, which have come to symbolize the rich heritage of the state. One of the nation's largest military centers, it has a population of over 1.3 million, making it the second largest city in the state of Texas and the seventh largest city in the United States. It was the fourth fastest-growing large city in the nation from 2000-2006 and the fifth fastest-growing from 2007 to 2008.
Mill Valley Refuse Service, Inc.
FleetRoute route optimization software was used to reroute the 48,000 collection stops serviced by Mill Valley Refuse Service, Inc. (MVRS) in Marin County, California. MVRS is contracted to collect refuse, recyclable materials and yard waste from eight municipalities on a weekly basis. The area is challenging to collect because of the suburban mountainous terrain with street size restrictions. This requires small, medium and large trucks where the small trucks dump into the large ones several times per day. The trucks have both one- and two-person crews. The collection service levels and set-outs vary and include residential and commercial, curbside and backyard pickups. The routes contain many corner lots and uphill/downhill stops. There were many customers whose service addresses are not the same as their house addresses due to the hilly terrain. This required the development of easy data editing capabilities to override standard address matching techniques.
This rerouting was done as a service bureau project, managed by the lead developer of FleetRoute, Dr. Paul Patterson. MVRS bought the FleetRoute license and makes modifications to the original routes. The resulting routes saved 14 percent in efficiency, reduced operating costs by $375,000, and resulted in a reduction in the number of vehicles from 22 to 19. This avoided a rate increase to the municipalities.
Knight Waste Services
Knight Waste Services (KWS) was a year 2003 start-up hauler that replaced the existing subcontractor to Waste Management, Inc. for the City of Fort Worth’s residential waste and recyclables collection. KWS was initially scheduled to start collection operations within three months of contract finalization, but that schedule was reduced to less than one month due to default of the incumbent sub-contractor.
Their challenge was daunting and their success was astounding. In order to make the business profitable, KWS needed to rapidly develop new routes that use fewer vehicles than its predecessors. Given these requirements, KWS recognized that FleetRoute™ was a critical element to their success. KWS engaged WasteBid to assist in implementing FleetRoute™ two weeks prior to commencing collections for their 61,000 customers. WasteBid’s routing experts worked very closely with KWS management to train them on FleetRoute™ and assisted them in conducting the initial routing. KWS was able to merge the routes to be serviced by fewer vehicles, balance the routes to be equal 10 hour workdays, and provide the drivers with accurate maps and travel directions. KWS merged and balanced 11 daily residential waste routes into 10 daily routes and merged 10 recycling routes into 7 daily routes, which resulted in a 19% reduction in the number of trucks required to service the contract as compared to the number of trucks used by Waste Management, Inc. and the previous sub-contractor (i.e., from 21 to 17 vehicles). For each day route, KWS averages 1200 houses for waste and 1450 houses for recycling with set-out rates from 50-70%. KWS utilizes McNielus automated trucks and approximately 0.5% of their customers require handicapped/back door collections.
Hunter Douglas Northeast
Being one of the largest window treatment manufacturers in the world, Hunter Douglas was very focused on maintaining high customer service satisfaction in implementing route optimization. With managing deliveries throughout the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern and Midwestern states, Hunter Douglas has routes that would last over multiple days with numerous loading points. The company also utilized couriers to deliver product to some of their retail customers, which also demanded software that would analyze which customers to deliver via courier versus their own fleet.
Hunter Douglas required a solution that was easy to learn and maintain and also incorporated very sophisticated constraints into their routing solution. WasteBid assisted Hunter Douglas in implementing TourSolver™ by providing geocoding of their customers, set-up and testing of their routing parameters and training on the software.
Pinnacle Waste Services
Pinnacle Waste is a fast growing commercial and industrial waste hauler servicing the Baltimore-Washington region. We required an easy way to manage our growth and optimize our routes, as we continuously added new customers. After evaluation of numerous routing software products, Pinnacle Waste chose C2Logix and TourSolver™. C2Logix provided many advantages over other offerings: extensive industry knowledge and experience, an easy to learn and implement software solution, and competitive pricing.
We have been completely satisfied with the implementation. C2Logix was very responsive in providing implementation assistance and answering questions. In particular, C2Logix saw that future releases of TourSolver™ addressed specific needs that we had for our company. The staff at C2Logix is very professional, knowledgeable, and great to do business with.
Pinnacle eliminated overtime and reduced mileage by 30%. The benefits of the implementation were realized from not only improving the distribution of customers between the trucks for each day, but also from optimizing the collection days for the customers. With assistance from C2Logix, we interfaced the TourSolver™ with our billing and customer service software to facilitate route updates.
Red River Waste Solutions
Based in Dripping Springs Texas, Red River Waste Solutions has used C2Logix for three of their new contract areas. Red River Waste Solutions bid on solid waste collection contracts across the country. When they are selected to take over collections, these are normally in cities that they have never serviced. They therefore have idea what the routes are and must create all new routes. Using C2Logix's Service Bureau, Red River Waste Solutions can create new routes that are already optimized when they begin collection.
In 2008, Red River Waste Solutions was awarded the contract for the City of Cedar Park, Texas. C2Logix's experienced team was tasked with creating new collection days to balance the current days. This was further complicated with the fact that the new collection days needed to take into account all of the new residential neighbourhoods that were being built in their service area. This way when the new neighbourhoods are finished the new collection days would maintain even.
In December 2008, Red River Waste Solutions was awarded the contract for Del Rio, Texas. There wasn't any data to show the collection days or routes. Red River Waste Solutions had one month to get everything ready to start collection. The C2Logix team was tasked with getting the customer data, creating new collection days, and creating new routes. All the team had to work with was a list of addresses from the utilities department. The C2Logix routing staff geocoded the address' which were then verified in the field. C2Logix's routing team was successful in creating new collection days and routes so that Red River Waste Solutions was able to start solid waste collection in the one month time frame.