Case Studies How the City of Lakeland, Fl Streamlined Their Business Processes with Routesmart

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	How the City of Lakeland, Fl Streamlined Their Business Processes with Routesmart

How the City of Lakeland, Fl Streamlined Their Business Processes with Routesmart

Technology Category	Functional Applications - Fleet Management Systems (FMS) Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems
Applicable Industries	Cities & Municipalities
Applicable Functions	Logistics & Transportation Facility Management
Use Cases	Fleet Management
Services	Training System Integration
Challenge	Lakeland had been managing much of their routing in antiquated ways. With this volume of work, the Solid Waste Division’s use of Excel spreadsheets to track and manage hundreds of weekly routes was just not up to the task. Lisa McCall, Systems and Applications Manager for Lakeland, describes their routing system before RouteSmart as highly inefficient. For their Solid Waste Division, they needed a more efficient way to accomplish more routes other than through spreadsheets that would take countless hours and months to compile. They didn’t really have a routing department but it would’ve involved a lot of resources—all of the supervisors and some of the drivers would have needed to participate in rerouting. And, with Excel, there were items falling through the cracks. Because they couldn’t visualize their route data on a map, there was no way to verify that the addresses were being pulled correctly from the billing system. Read More
About Customer	The City of Lakeland is located in Polk County, Florida. Its Public Works Department oversees a budget of approximately $53 million and employs 265 people that span seven divisions, including Fleet Management and Solid Waste. Lakeland’s Solid Waste Management Division has 65 employees and 41 trucks working five days a week. The division provides solid waste services to over 42,000 households in the city, twice a week. They also handle all commercial waste collection, yard trash and curbside recycling, as well as bulk pickup for yard trash, junk, and appliances. Read More
Solution	McCall was looking for an answer. She met with the RouteSmart sales and technical teams to analyze the city’s needs, and recognized how easily the software could be integrated with their existing Esri® ArcGIS platform. It became clear that McCall should advocate for this solution. In February of 2008, the city began to implement RouteSmart. McCall and five other members of her Public Works team took advantage of RouteSmart training. McCall started with the residential solid waste collections routes. During this period, she committed to working on site at the Solid Waste offices for several months in order to optimize and review RouteSmart, and give the new routes to the drivers to test. The goal for the drivers was to detail what made a RouteSmart route work, and what made it not work, so McCall could perform adjustments in RouteSmart and give them a new iteration the next day. McCall received solid, valuable feedback. Some drivers gave her very positive reports and others provided specific instances where she could improve the routes. For example, McCall used the zone priority functionality to divert a route around a school zone until later in the day. RouteSmart also helped with safety goals set by the drivers, eliminating unnecessary u-turns and maximizing the number of right turns. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Fleet Management Systems (FMS)

Functional Applications - Remote Monitoring & Control Systems

Applicable Industries

Cities & Municipalities

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation

Facility Management

Use Cases

Fleet Management

Services

Training

System Integration

Challenge

Lakeland had been managing much of their routing in antiquated ways. With this volume of work, the Solid Waste Division’s use of Excel spreadsheets to track and manage hundreds of weekly routes was just not up to the task. Lisa McCall, Systems and Applications Manager for Lakeland, describes their routing system before RouteSmart as highly inefficient. For their Solid Waste Division, they needed a more efficient way to accomplish more routes other than through spreadsheets that would take countless hours and months to compile. They didn’t really have a routing department but it would’ve involved a lot of resources—all of the supervisors and some of the drivers would have needed to participate in rerouting. And, with Excel, there were items falling through the cracks. Because they couldn’t visualize their route data on a map, there was no way to verify that the addresses were being pulled correctly from the billing system.

About Customer

The City of Lakeland is located in Polk County, Florida. Its Public Works Department oversees a budget of approximately $53 million and employs 265 people that span seven divisions, including Fleet Management and Solid Waste. Lakeland’s Solid Waste Management Division has 65 employees and 41 trucks working five days a week. The division provides solid waste services to over 42,000 households in the city, twice a week. They also handle all commercial waste collection, yard trash and curbside recycling, as well as bulk pickup for yard trash, junk, and appliances.

Solution

McCall was looking for an answer. She met with the RouteSmart sales and technical teams to analyze the city’s needs, and recognized how easily the software could be integrated with their existing Esri® ArcGIS platform. It became clear that McCall should advocate for this solution. In February of 2008, the city began to implement RouteSmart. McCall and five other members of her Public Works team took advantage of RouteSmart training. McCall started with the residential solid waste collections routes. During this period, she committed to working on site at the Solid Waste offices for several months in order to optimize and review RouteSmart, and give the new routes to the drivers to test. The goal for the drivers was to detail what made a RouteSmart route work, and what made it not work, so McCall could perform adjustments in RouteSmart and give them a new iteration the next day. McCall received solid, valuable feedback. Some drivers gave her very positive reports and others provided specific instances where she could improve the routes. For example, McCall used the zone priority functionality to divert a route around a school zone until later in the day. RouteSmart also helped with safety goals set by the drivers, eliminating unnecessary u-turns and maximizing the number of right turns.

Impact #1	Achieving the best return on investment: Based on fuel and maintenance savings, the Solid Waste Division has achieved a significant return on their RouteSmart investment. Their time-savings have also been significant.
Impact #2	Simplifying the routing process: Much has changed throughout the Public Works Division. RouteSmart has changed our business processes significantly. Given how easy it now is to get all the addresses in there and separate routes out based on whatever criteria you want to—and then run the sequence button—it’s very, very simple to do.
Impact #3	Making the routes more efficient: When they were first considering the new RouteSmart routes, they realized immediately that it would provide greater efficiencies. The drivers were surprised that they could increase productivity as much as RouteSmart projected, but it quickly became obvious that it could be done.

Impact #1

Achieving the best return on investment: Based on fuel and maintenance savings, the Solid Waste Division has achieved a significant return on their RouteSmart investment. Their time-savings have also been significant.

Impact #2

Simplifying the routing process: Much has changed throughout the Public Works Division. RouteSmart has changed our business processes significantly. Given how easy it now is to get all the addresses in there and separate routes out based on whatever criteria you want to—and then run the sequence button—it’s very, very simple to do.

Impact #3

Making the routes more efficient: When they were first considering the new RouteSmart routes, they realized immediately that it would provide greater efficiencies. The drivers were surprised that they could increase productivity as much as RouteSmart projected, but it quickly became obvious that it could be done.

Benefit #1	The Solid Waste Division provides solid waste services to over 42,000 households in the city, twice a week.
Benefit #2	The Public Works Department oversees a budget of approximately $53 million and employs 265 people.
Benefit #3	Lakeland’s Solid Waste Management Division has 65 employees and 41 trucks working five days a week.

Benefit #1

The Solid Waste Division provides solid waste services to over 42,000 households in the city, twice a week.

Benefit #2

The Public Works Department oversees a budget of approximately $53 million and employs 265 people.

Benefit #3

Lakeland’s Solid Waste Management Division has 65 employees and 41 trucks working five days a week.

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Overview

How the City of Lakeland, Fl Streamlined Their Business Processes with Routesmart

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit