How Moulinot improved traceability of food waste collection.

Moulinot specializes in recycling food waste.

Moulinot is a social and solidarity-based economy company that specializes in recycling food waste. The company focuses on three areas:

• Support and training in how to sort food waste
• Waste collection using environmentally friendly vehicles
• Food waste recycling using composting and methanization

Since the company was established in 2013, Moulinot has experienced very strong growth, doubling its capacity every year.

Today, the company employs nearly 40 employees and manages more than 550 collection points in the Greater Paris area. Every day, Moulinot trucks collect the equivalent of more than 150,000 meals.

Praxedo was a good fit to help the company shift to paperless process.

Moulinot drivers complete more than 300 collections every day, sometimes within very limited time slots. At each stop, the company has a number of requirements to fulfill, in terms of customer reporting and in terms of traceability to comply with regulatory requirements.

To meet these requirements, Moulinot knew it had to move to paperless processes. So, the company drafted a specification summarizing everything it required for mobile operations. After issuing a Request for Proposal and carefully studying several potential solutions, Moulinot chose the Praxedo solution, which was a particularly good fit with the company’s mobility requirements.

Moulinot drivers now benefit from a mobile application

Each waste collection vehicle is equipped with a tablet that enables Moulinot’s drivers to use the Praxedo mobile application to see their schedules and travel routes. Once drivers collect the waste bins at the customer site, they enter information such as the weight and number of bins collected, as well as qualitative information such as the quality of the sorting, into the Praxedo application.

Drivers can also include location- and time-stamped photos in their service reports to provide customers with proof of collection. This is particularly important when there is an issue, such as a lack of bins or a closed business, that meant collection could not take place.

At some collection locations, Moulinot goes even further and has equipped collection bins with RFID chips. Using a scale and an RFID chip reader in the back of the truck, along with a system developed in partnership with Praxedo, drivers can automatically read the waste collection information in the chip. The information is sent directly to the Praxedo application, which is connected to the Moulinot information system. Drivers simply press a button and all the information needed for customer reports and billing is sent directly to the Praxedo application. Once the driver validates the report, all the information is sent to Moulinot’s information system.

Customized forms and near-real-time information increase productivity.

The customizable forms that are available in the Praxedo application have helped Moulinot increase productivity because the company can create and remove form fields to suit the specific information requirements for each collection route.

Drivers no longer have to deal with paperwork in the cab of their truck. With a few taps on their tablet, all the information is entered into the Praxedo application. This reduces the risk of error and ensures the information is available for use in the Moulinot information system in near-real-time.

The data reported using the Praxedo application is used for two purposes:

• Billing:

Moulinot invoices based on the weight of the waste collected, so all the collection data must be consolidated to bill customers. With thousands of collections carried out each month, automated data consolidation saves Moulinot a huge amount of time when it comes to billing.

• Customer reports:

Moulinot has created a web portal where customers can access all the data entered into the Praxedo application. This enables each customer to have complete insight into the waste collection that occurred at its sites. For Moulinot, the ability to communicate these details to very demanding customers in near-real-time is a real competitive advantage. Without the application, it would be very difficult to provide this information.

Mobility and traceability bring key benefits.

For Moulinot CEO, Fabien Delory, the two main benefits of the Praxedo mobile application are mobility and traceability.

Mobility allows Moulinot to equip each of its waste collection vehicles with a computer system, so drivers can enter all the relevant information while still at the customer site. All drivers working in the Greater Paris area are using the Praxedo application.

Traceability is related to the fact that Moulinot can use the Praxedo solution to very quickly and easily access the collection data, especially when the solution is connected to an RFID chip reader in the truck. With the Praxedo application, paperless processes can be used to their full extent to improve data reporting and accuracy. These capabilities are extremely important because the data enables Moulinot to meet regulatory requirements and to provide customers with qualitative information about their food waste collections.