Digitalization of waste recycling services: a great story… that concerns you! By Olivier Pagès

We can easily compare industrial sectors to gastronomic recipes: some of them are traditional, others are more contemporary. In terms of waste collection and recycling, we used to be more traditional. But this was way before the leader of the recycling sector, SUEZ Group, decided to force the sector to enter in the new era of digitalization.

When industry meets technology…

The story is edifying, and characteristic of a virtuous meeting between an industrial need and a technology. It is also a meeting with a start-up dedicated to B2B innovation through the creation of critical data for a worldwide leader in its sector. It all started with the presentation by ffly4u to Suez teams in Occitanie, of the connected drums solution developed by ffly4u. It is based on “Edge AI Low Power®” technology, allowing embedded processing (in our ffly4u device) of the data produced by the movement sensor through Artificial Intelligence, which means Machine Learning and Deep Learning. The demo consisted in showing how a connected drum is able to differentiate its rolling on the ground from its rolling on an axial drum. This identification of drum life phases makes it possible to accurately compute the daily length of unwound cable on each drum with a success rate close to 95%. At the end of 2020, this data had become a “must have” in the cable and telephone fiber sector – an indicator of the working site progress – which prevails today in most of the calls for tenders in Europe and Middle East. 

The skip filling alert, a key indicator of the work in progress 

The Suez teams were then convinced of the relevance of our technology to create new specific business data, more valuable than the geolocation of objects. To digitize their business, they came to the conclusion that their central and differentiating data was the skip filling alert. To do so, it was necessary to identify the number of compactions, consisting in compressing, by a roller at the end of an articulated arm, the contents of the skip. The embedded “Edge AI Low Power®” technology is essential in this use case. Thanks to this innovative technology, the skip is able to identify, through the recognition of the vibratory signature of the arm on the skip, the action of the compressor arm.  

5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)

After a validation test of the end-to-end service, integrating at dock/off dock geolocations, loading / unloading alerts, emptying and other presence on industrial sites, 2 types of dashboards have been designed, a daily and a weekly one. The deployment on 13 sites and more than 200 skips was then implemented very quickly at the end of 2020 allowing a reduction of 5% in (GHG).

This is an excellent example of the value created by a leader in a traditional sector through technologies linked to the production of critical data. Each industrial sector is or will be concerned in the near future: we have already digitized the cable/fiber and waste recycling sectors, and also returnable transit packaging in the aeronautics industry.

New business data for a quick ROI

Each industrial sector will be revisited through the production of data, for a double challenge: a new level of industrial performance by reducing costs, and above all, by the monetization of business data that brings value to your own customers. Thus, creating a new source of income for your benefit.

Believe me, your job is already impacted … whether you are Coq au vin or molecular cuisine, your job will change in a sustainable and virtuous way through the valuation of business data. That’s for sure!

Remember the story of Suez – ffly4u. Yours is on the way!