We hear one glowing report after another of manufacturing giants such as Motorola, Toyota and General Electric, and their ability to implement a continual series of process improvement strategies. Six Sigma, Lean, Value Stream Mapping, Customer Experience Management (CEM) …the list goes on. And with every new analysis comes a report of processes improved and millions more dollars saved. This is all good stuff, but if you don’t work for one of those companies, do you really care? Probably you should.

You might think that these kinds of analyses are geared toward the repetitive tasks associated with assembly-line manufacturing or document processing …and you’d be right. But you might be surprised to learn that those same techniques that create Wall Street
Journal headlines for international mega-corporations are also used to improve the performance of NASCAR pit crews, basketball teams, and sandwich factories.

That’s right. Those repetitive tasks such as picking up trash cans on a residential collection route, pushing waste through a transfer station or hand-picking recyclables at a MRF can be analyzed. We’ve been doing it for years and yet are constantly learning new ways to analyze the same old day-to-day tasks. And of course, those process improvement tools also apply to landfill operations

By optimizing the flow rates that make up your facility’s systems, you have the potential to save a lot of money within your operation – often millions of dollars. In fact, some facilities have saved more …a whole lot more. As a result of our conducting a CORE® Assessment, one of our clients reported an increased landfill life of 19 years …with an accompanying increase in gate revenue of $338,000,000.

Yes, that’s $338 million!

According to the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), most of a landfill’s cost is spent on operations. This holds true for other types of waste facilities as well, where individual operations can represent well over 80% of annual costs.

National polls indicate that 70% of waste facility managers think their operation is inefficient – mostly as a result of doing the same thing – in the same way – for the past 30 years.

If 70% of managers think their operations are inefficient…
If most operational inefficiencies result from facilities doing the same thing
they’ve done for the past 30 years…
And if operations account for most of a facility’s cost… Where do you think you’ll find the most opportunity increase efficiency and reduce costs?

That’s right: OPERATIONS.

Process improvement can be applied to any type of waste management process along every step of the waste flow. We have done work at transfer stations, MRFs, landfills, organics processing facilities, recycling centers, and for waste collections. Our menu of services is listed below. Click the links below to read more or send us an email today to find out how process improvement can drastically improve your waste facility.