Collect Weighs in on Recycling

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Problem

Each day, hundreds of trucks deliver tons of recyclable material through the gates of a municipal recycling site. Each truck needs to be weighed as it enters the site and then weighed again as it leaves. The two weights are used to calculate the amount of recyclable material that has been dropped off. The recycling fee is then calculated and passed to the municipal accounting department to collect payment.

The manual, paper-based system in place at the municipality was both time and labor intensive and required manual recording of the weights, generating a handwritten paper receipt for the truck driver and manually creating a daily report that had to be sent to the accounting department at the end of each day.

An IT technical support specialist from the municipality contacted Labtronics, looking for a solution that could at least eliminate the manual recording of the weights.

What he discovered was a solution that could do just that… and a whole lot more.

Solution

Labtronics recommended using Collect with Direct XL to automatically collect the weights from the Weigh-Tronix truck scale and then transfer that data via a wireless serial connection into an Excel® spreadsheet that is running on a PC located in one of the offices at the site.

Along with the weights, Collect also records an account number that the driver has entered at the scale. Having the account number in the Excel® spreadsheet eliminates the need to issue paper receipts to the drivers.

Collect with DIRECT-XL™ is a unique technology that doesn’t rely on cursor location for placing data in Excel®. This is ideal for this application as it ensures that data is always placed in the correct location in the Excel® spreadsheet, even if someone in the office is working in another application while data is being collected from the scale.

With weights and account numbers being automatically collected from the scales and saved in the Excel® spreadsheet, there was just one more step to creating a complete solution - getting the data to the accounting department.


To automate that part of the process, Labtronics created an Excel® macro that runs every night at midnight. The macro automatically emails the spreadsheet, with the day’s truck weights and account information to the accounting office, and a new spreadsheet is created, ready for the next day. Every morning the accounting department has the information that they need right there waiting for them and the recycling site automatically has a new spreadsheet ready to collect data.

Result

The Support and Applications Specialists at Labtronics have used Collect to deliver more than just data collection. They have delivered a cost-effective solution that is highly integrated with Excel®, giving the recycling facility an automated process that eliminates all of the manual steps in their data collection and reporting process.

• Labor costs are eliminated for recording weights, generating receipts and creating the daily report for accounting
• Truck weights are always accurately collected and recorded
• It is easier and quicker for truck drivers to be processed in and out of the recycling centre
• The Accounting department has all the information they need automatically delivered to them every morning

What used to be a manual paper-based process is now a fully automated solution that reduces costs each day, while ensuring that data is being processed more efficiently.

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