Industry: Domestic and trade waste collection
Origin: Wales
Coverage: Servicing 33,000 collection points
Size: 17 vehicles
Waste streams: MSW, MDR, Food
Using predicted 2010 solid waste weights and predicted 2015 food/recycling weights the requirement was to create new routes for all waste/recycling types while meeting other service requirements. All food and recycling vehicles were to be kept but a reduction in waste vehicles was a target.
Blaenau Gwent were looking to optimise their entire collection service routes to achieve the more cost effective method of collection. This included moving from a weekly waste collection to a fortnightly collection. Blaenau Gwent were looking for an optimisation tool that could handle the complex restraints that are involved in the waste collection industry and a tool that could handle the 110,000 collections that were required in the 2 week cycle. Blaenau Gwent were also looking for an Optimisation tool to geocode the collection points as they did not have coordinates. Some of the requirements for the project are as follows.
The following were the results achieved: