Rapid Waste Data Ingestion for Annual Reporting
MANUFACTURER CASE STUDY
A manufacturer needed to complete annual reporting for one of their distribution hubs. This had previously been a time-intensive process of aggregating invoices and monthly reports from all of their sites’ vendors, leading to reporting delays.
WATS solved this by rapidly ingesting the data from their 20+ waste streams, allowing the client to quickly and conveniently export waste metrics for their reporting.
100+
20+
invoices and waste generation reports annually
Waste streams on WATS platform
BUSINESS DETAILS
Multi-site manufacturing
Annual waste reporting and requirements for SCS Global Services Zero Waste Program Certification
CASE STUDY DETAILS
Needed to efficiently aggregate waste data to streamline the annual waste reporting process.
The Challenge
The client had waste reporting requirements that necessitated organizing all of their annual waste records for each of their 20+ waste streams.
Aggregating this data was a challenge because each year the site received over 100 different files of waste data from 20 different vendors in different formats. The site needed this data in order to submit for auditing and recertification to the SCS Global Services Zero Waste Program Certification.
The tedious data gathering process caused reporting delays (over a year in this case) and pulled site stakeholders away from more impactful waste reduction efforts.
The Solution
The client used WATS to simplify and streamline their annual reporting. Instead of manually reviewing, reformatting, recalculating, and recombining the metrics they received from their waste vendors, the client sent their data to WATS, and WATS’ ingestion tools took care of the aggregation process.
This included using OCR technology to parse PDF files, converting volume-based metrics into weights, and standardizing the fields on each file.
The Result
The WATS rapid data ingestion capabilities dramatically reduced the time necessary to digitize waste data. What used to require hours of manually typing values into spreadsheets was automated using the WATS software.
Now that the client is set up in WATS, they can continue to track their waste diversion throughout the year. WATS data flags provide real-time oversight into which metrics are still outstanding for the next year of reporting— giving them a jump-start on their future reporting and recertification.