Solutions
Dynamic round planning
A round that rebuilds itself from overnight readings, and a driver app the crew will actually use.
Dynamic round planning replaces a fixed collection timetable with a round rebuilt every morning from overnight sensor readings. Containers over their fill threshold are selected automatically, sequenced into an efficient route, and pushed to the driver's tablet with live fill percentages, locations and navigation.
Vejle Municipality's round is calculated at 05:00 each day across 547 instrumented bins spread over 2,000 km of roads. Nobody in the office builds it by hand.
The planner
What the office sees
A live map and list of every container, colour-coded green, amber and red against thresholds you set. You can accept the generated round, adjust it, add a container that is not over threshold but is on the way, or hold one back.
Nobody in the office builds a round by hand any more, and nobody drives out to check a bin before deciding.
- Thresholds you control. 80–90% is the usual starting point, and it can differ by container type, waste stream, location or season.
- Local rules. Langeland runs an extra data check every Wednesday to catch containers likely to become critical over the weekend in holiday-home areas. Rules like that are configuration, not a special request.
- Multi-stream rounds. A vehicle handling several fractions in one pass can be planned as such — Langeland's service truck and trailer covers four fractions at a time.
- Manual override, always. Events, road closures, complaints and reported access problems all sit outside the data. The planner assists the supervisor; it does not replace them.
The driver app
What the crew sees
If drivers do not trust the waste collection round, the project fails — regardless of how good the analytics are. So the app is built for the cab, not the office.
The day's stops, each with a live fill percentage and an exact location. Navigation between them. One tap to confirm a lift. A field to report damage, contamination or an access problem while standing in front of it. And, importantly, the reason each stop is on the list, so nobody is following instructions they cannot interrogate.
On several deployments drivers plan their own sequence from the flagged list rather than following a fixed order, and prefer it that way. Langeland's operations manager handed round planning to the driver entirely once the data proved itself.
It is easy to use and provides an overview, so we are able to delegate the planning of the service route to our driver — he is now fully in charge of the process.Operations manager — Langelands Forsyning, Denmark
- Android and iOS. Runs on a standard tablet or phone; no proprietary in-cab hardware.
- Usable by contractors. Fanø connected its contractor to the same app so emptying orders arrive directly and completion is reported back — which also produces clean invoicing data.
- Fault reporting at the bin. Vejle's drivers register emptyings and report repair needs on the spot rather than remembering them until the depot.
- Straightforward enough for cover staff. Vejle's operations assistant makes the point that substitutes pick it up without difficulty, which matters more than it sounds when someone is off sick.
Forecasting
Planning ahead of the threshold, not behind it
A live reading tells you a container is full now. A forecast tells you which containers will be full on Thursday, which is the more useful number when you are deciding what Thursday's round should look like.
The platform's forecasting draws on each container's own fill history, current readings, driver reports and other data sources, and improves at predicting individual containers over time — Vejle describes the route planning system as continuously getting better at anticipating when each container needs emptying next.
In practice this is what lets you consolidate: instead of a container tipping over threshold on its own and forcing a special trip, it can be picked up on the day the vehicle is already in that area.
- Fewer one-container detours by pulling near-threshold stops into a round already passing.
- Weekend and bank holiday cover planned from predicted fill rather than a guess about how busy Saturday will be.
- Seasonal adaptation for locations whose demand curve changes completely between February and August.
- Event handling — raise reporting frequency and tighten thresholds around a festival, match day or bank holiday weekend.
Questions
Round planning questions
Does the system decide the round, or do we?
It proposes; you dispose. The platform generates an optimised round automatically from the readings, and a supervisor can accept it, add stops, remove stops or reorder it. There are always factors outside the data — a road closure, an event, a complaint, a container someone reported as damaged — and the planner is built on the assumption that a human is applying them.
What fill threshold should we set?
80–90% is the standard starting point: Vejle flags at 80%, Langeland typically adds a container at 80–90%. The right figure depends on your headroom between reading and visit. A rural bring site you reach twice a week needs a lower threshold than a town-centre bin you can reach the same afternoon. Thresholds can vary by container type, waste stream, location and season, and most customers tune them in the first couple of months.
Will our drivers accept it?
Generally yes, once two things are true: the readings are accurate enough that they are not sent to bins that turn out to be half empty, and somebody has given them a straight answer about what the freed-up hours are for. Drivers on existing deployments report liking the visibility — being able to see fill levels and exact locations and plan their own sequence saves them time and arguments. What loses them is a system that flags full bins that are not, which is why the sensor specification matters as much as the software.
Does this work if our collections are done by a contractor?
Yes. Contractors get their own access and receive the round directly in the driver app, confirming each lift as they go. Fanø Municipality connected its contractor precisely this way so that emptying orders arrive through the system and invoicing data comes back through it — which reduces the contractor's administration as well as the authority's. Where a contractor prefers to keep its own in-cab system, fill data can be delivered to it through the API instead.
Can it plan rounds for vehicles collecting several waste streams at once?
Yes. Multi-fraction rounds are a normal case, not an exception — Langelands Forsyning runs a service truck and trailer that handles four fractions in a single pass, alongside three vehicles on daily collection. Round generation accounts for which streams each vehicle can take and the capacity available.
What happens on a day when nothing is over threshold?
You do not send a vehicle out, which is the point. In practice most operations find a lower-priority backlog absorbs that capacity quickly — litter picking, fly-tipping, grounds maintenance, bin repairs. Vejle used its freed capacity to start collecting waste along roads and at bridges, work that had previously never made it to the top of the list.
Next step
See what your own bin data would say
A 90-day pilot on one round tells you exactly how much of your current collection effort is going to bins that were not full. No commitment beyond the pilot, and you keep the data.