Over the course of four years, a national grocery retailer’s dedicated WM team reduced their waste spend by $1.3 million through ongoing compactor optimization.
The National Account Experience
A case study in data-driven cost savings
National Grocer Saves $1.3M by Optimizing Waste Services
Customer Profile
- Industry: Grocery
- Locations: 2,000
- National Account Since: 2013
Customer Benefits
- $1.3M in waste service savings
- Maintained efficient haul rate
- Reduced average cost per ton by 2%
- Visibility to results and improvement opportunities in elementsSM analytics platform
Customer Challenge: Control Waste Spend
At grocery stores, where material management is round-the-clock, operations teams often depend on compactors for the capacity they need with the smallest physical footprint. A national grocery retailer in the WM National Accounts program used compactors at their 2,000+ stores across the United States, but they weren’t seeing the return they expected on their investment. Stores relied on employees to gage container fullness and schedule service, and as a result, weren’t hitting consistent tonnage for each pull. In addition to creating extra work for staff, manual monitoring was leading to additional haul costs. The customer looked to their WM team for a strategy to would raise compactor efficiency — and generate cost and labor savings.
Solution: Ongoing Load Maximization
With access to real-time data as well as historic service trends for this retailer, the National Account team was uniquely equipped to implement a program that maximized compactor tonnage at all stores.
To account for seasonal fluctuations in this retailer’s waste volume, the team analyzed compactor tonnage multiple times per year. They set a target weight for each container based on its size, material, and historic performance, and then defined a strategic pickup schedule that would raise tonnage toward that goal.
To reduce the risk of overloaded containers, target weights also took into account the service provider’s maximum tonnage threshold for transporting the loads. Targets were set one ton below these limits to allow for containers to be sufficiently full but still have enough room for additional material if service was delayed or an emergency happened at the store.
Results: $1.3 Million Cost Savings
By deploying this optimization strategy over more than four years, WM reduced the customer’s waste spend by $1.3 million. The WM program helped the business maintain an average haul rate above 7 tons per haul. This rate is more than 20% better than the rate achieved by the customer’s previous broker, and helped reduce the average cost per ton by 2%.
The team continues to track compactor performance on WM's elementsSM analytics platform, and deliver compounding savings through process optimization.
The National Accounts Advantage: Data Analytics
National Account customers are always seeing their program improve — from day one to every day after. By combining elementsSM analytics data with customer goals, our team offers customized solutions that achieve savings, sustainability improvements and regulatory alignment.
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