Mobile Solutions for Scrap Metal Recycling Efficiency
A privately held, Detroit-based company operates across various industries including metals recycling, real estate, industrial services, beverage distribution, automotive retailing, transportation, hydroponic greenhouse operations, and logistics.
Scope of Work:
The engagement required transitioning the organization from its manual, paper-driven processes to a fully automated, enterprise-ready solution accessible across all customer locations. The system needed the capability to capture pictures and videos of scrap materials onsite and transmit them in real time to administrative offices, ensuring immediate visibility and decision support. Additionally, the solution had to consolidate, catalog, and securely store all captured media for future reference and audit needs.
The architecture was also designed with an AI-Enabled architecture, enabling future enhancements such as automated scrap classification, quality scoring, and intelligent anomaly detection to further strengthen operational accuracy and decision-making.
Business Challenge:
A geographically fragmented, fully manual workflow severely hindered real-time data capture, centralized consolidation, and consistent bid management across the organization.
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Manual Workflow Bottlenecks
The organization relied on fully manual processes to manage scrap-metal operations, creating significant operational strain on both Sales and IT teams responsible for execution and oversight. -
On-Site Data Collection Overload
Teams were required to physically visit customer locations, capture scrap-metal details, and manually relay this information to administrative centers, resulting in fragmented data capture and slow turnaround. -
Geographically Distributed Operations
Scrap yards and customer sites were dispersed across multiple regions, making coordination, data consolidation, and timely communication increasingly time-consuming and inefficient. -
Unstructured Bidding Inputs
Bid-related data was not centrally consolidated or preserved, leading to inconsistent decision-making, lack of historical reference, and an inability to maintain traceable bid archives.
JRD Systems Solutions:
- Workflow Clarity: Analyzed the existing application to build the complete As-Is process flow.
- Future-State Alignment: Mapped requirements and process steps to define the To-Be model.
- Mobile Innovation: Proposed a new mobile app integrated seamlessly with SharePoint 2010.
- Unified Data Exchange: Enabled mobile-to-SharePoint communication via a custom JRDSI web service.
- Centralized Media Archiving: Stored all uploaded media files in a SharePoint 2010 document library for long-term reference.
- AI-Enabled Architecture: Designed the solution to support future automated tagging and image classification.
- Intelligent Distribution: Allowed configuration of email recipients for automated media file sharing.
- Custom Solution Rollout: Delivered and deployed a tailored solution to end users.
- Enterprise Tech Foundation: Built on .NET, Oracle, HTML, JavaScript, and IIS technologies.
Key Benefits:
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Streamlined Communication Workflow:
Enabled a structured, real-time communication channel between the sales team and customers. -
End-to-End Process Automation:
Automated the complete operational cycle, allowing the sales team to execute tasks more efficiently, eliminate manual dependencies, and accelerate decision-making. -
Enhanced Customer Experience:
Improved response times and service quality, directly contributing to higher customer satisfaction and increased business turnover. -
Revenue & Profit Growth:
The optimized process and faster bid execution helped significantly increase total turnover and profitability in the scrap metal business. -
Competitive Bidding Advantage
Improved scrap assessment speed and accuracy with automated AI classification, Centralized data and faster information access provided a strategic edge during bidding cycles. -
Improved Governance
Enhanced safety and compliance with AI that identifies restricted or hazardous materials during intake.
Problem Statement
Existing problem
- The organization managed all its scrap metal-related business activities manually, which was a very tedious job for its Sales and IT teams to manage and execute.
- These activities included visiting customer locations to view the scrap metal, consolidate all the scrap metal details, and send it across to the administrative office centers.
- All these activities were time-consuming as such scrap centers were spread across geographical regions.
- Bid for such scrap metals based on inputs from the teams were not consolidated and shared so that they could be preserved for all future references.
Customer Needs
- The organization was required to move on from the present-day manual approach to the efficient world of automation.
- A solution was required which could work from all customer locations.
- It could capture Pictures and Videos of Scrap material at Customer locations and send them in real-time to administrative offices.
- Consolidate and store all such data for all future references that could arise in the uncertain future.
- JRDSI was called in to provide its expertise to identify a robust and effective solution to resolve challenges.
JRD Contribution
Solution
- Analyzed the existing Workflow application to build the As-Is process flow.
- Conducted requirement analysis and mapped the process steps to the To-Be state.
- Proposed an innovative idea of developing a mobile application and then integrating it with SharePoint 2010.
- The Mobile application developed would communicate via a JRDSI developed custom web service with the centralized repository of SharePoint.
- Once uploaded, this SharePoint 2010 document library would store all such media files for all future reference purposes.
- It was also possible to configure the application with a specified list of email addresses to whom the same media files could be sent.
- Customized solution deployed and rolled out to users.
- Technology stack included Microsoft .Net Framework, (ASP .Net, C#) Oracle, HTML , Java Scripts, IIS.
Benefits
- Effective communication management process between sales team and its customers.
- Automation of the entire process enabled and helped sales team to perform their job in an efficient manner.
- Improved customer services directly resulted in increased turnover and better customer service.
- Increased their Total turnover and Profits from its scrap metal business.
- It provide an edge over its competitors in bidding process.
- It improvised on document management for all future references.