Digitalizing Waste Handling With Insite

Digitalizing Waste Handling With Insite

Minnesota and Finland are already leaders in digitalization trends and have many systems in place to work together to a mutual advantage. Thanks to a Minnesota delegation to Finland in 2021, a planned Finnish delegation to Minnesota in 2022, and a formal agreement linking the two together, mutual business opportunities have never been better! Harmony Enterprises is proud to have been a part of the Digitalization and Energy: Business Opportunities for Minnesota and Finland virtual briefing and networking event on April 20 and 21st. This event included speakers and audience members from Minnesota and the United States, Finland, Kosovo, and Germany.

The briefing was set up to bring businesses up to date on the latest IoT and energy trends and connect businesses in both Finland and Minnesota with new potential partners. Participants in the event discussed several topics related to the Internet of Things (IoT), how to identify and utilize opportunities presented by new technologies, and how both Finland and Minnesota are making progress toward de-cabonization goals with the help of IoT.  This discussion is especially compelling given the energy challenges presented by recent global geo-political events. The keynote address was provided by Minnesota’s own New Boundary Technologies, a long-time partner of Harmony Enterprises.

Insite Is Digitalizing Waste Handling

Harmony Enterprises was proud to be a presenter at the conference, speaking about how the Internet of Things is applied to both indoor and outdoor trash compactors, helping to reduce energy consumption and improve efficiencies in customer-facing businesses, retail locations, and distribution centers.

Harmony’s SmartPack is the no-touch automatic compactor with photo eye opening loading door, hydraulic ram, stainless steel chamber, and industry leading 11:1 compaction ratio. It is often used to help with trash in airports, shopping malls, restaurants, food courts, hospitals, universities, museums, and sporting venues.

SmartPack is an IoT machine, when combined with Harmony’s Insite Technology. Insite is invisible to the end user, but consists of the compactor’s PLC connected to a cellular gateway that communicates with the cloud to send SMS and email messages to end users, alerting them when their machines are partially full, full, or need service. This system allows trash to be emptied on a “just in time” basis, reducing the employee FTE’s required to manage waste, as well as improving the customer or traveler experience. It also ensures that each bag of trash is full, providing a great deal of cost savings on accessories over time and multiple units. Business managers can also export reports and see real time status of machines on a customized dashboard, helping them to proactively schedule staff at optimum times.

This same Insite technology is available with our outdoor stationary compactors. These space saving machines have incredible compaction ratios and can be fed in a variety of ways and configurations. When combined with Insite, haulers are alerted when the compactors are near full, allowing haulers time to get there before the compactors are locked out, but maximizing the amount of waste in each pull. By using this IoT technology, customers save several hauls per month, saving not only expense, but significantly reducing the CO2 emissions put into the atmosphere by the trucks serving their locations. In addition, the amount and volume of waste added to landfills is reduced by up to 4X through the compaction of the equipment itself.

With the cost of IoT technology and devices decreasing significantly in the past five year, more and more customers are utilizing them to maximize the benefit of their waste and recycling machines.  Most are achieving an ROI in less than one year!

Contact Us To Learn How Insite Can Help You!

Do you have an indoor or outdoor compactor at your business location? Do you currently have monitoring capabilities on those machines, or are you not even sure how that all works? We can help explain the benefits to IoT on your compactors, and show you examples of businesses that are already saving using Insite technology. We provide free quotes and site reviews of your operations. Don’t put off getting up to speed on how technology can help – call us at (507) 886-6666 or Contact Us now!