Case Study 3 of 3: Tire Stewardship BC Digitizes Full Claims Cycle

How to Integrate the Full Claims Supply Chain?

One remaining challenge was simplifying data entry, specifically moving away from the use of paper manifests for the collection of tires and adding integrity to the submitted data.  The claims are manually entered by the participant and given the level of reporting required (retailer, city, tire counts, scale weights etc.) this process is extremely time consuming and prone to error.  For TSBC the auditing of the data is also very time consuming.  The tire collection part of the TSBC program generates over 70,000 waste manifests per year, a very non environmentally friendly approach to tire collection.  

TSBC’s main objectives for digitizing this part of the program was two-fold: to eliminate paper and to add integrity to the data through the use of GPS.

Electronic field data collection is not new, but it is for tire collection.  Almost all large trucking operations are now equipping trucks with GPS, monitoring truck systems and fleet movements, and automating the tracking and billing of goods movement. The main claimant, Liberty Tire Recycling, already had a proprietary field data collection system across its truck fleet, gathering information about the generators and each pick up and also used for billing. The duplication of effort across paper forms and electronic data become an obvious opportunity for efficiency.

PICTUS has seen other vendors building specific purpose mobile apps which PROs then require the transporter to use. While it improves the life of the PRO, it causes headaches for the transporter when two different mobile applications are required. The PICTUS strategy within the Collections API focuses on using existing transporter collection systems so that data is only captured once, at the source. In the diagram below, you can see the Claimant field systems on the right working with the Collections API to feed PICTUS Claims.

In a pilot project, the PICTUS team coordinated the work at TSBC and Liberty Tire Recycling so that electronic data captured in the field could easily flow through into PICTUS. An eManifest team with PICTUS, Western Rubber (Liberty) operations staff in Vancouver, Liberty Tire Recycling IT in Pittsburgh and TSBC staff in Victoria  was formed. Liberty Tire Recycling IT was using an older system with less modern tools, but was able to quickly build a simple JSON output using the PICTUS specification.

The eManifest solution reduced Liberty’s data entry efforts while also eliminating keying errors. At the same time, it re-focused TSBC efforts away from repetitive manual claim checking now done by the rules engine, so more effort could be spent on the process and exception follow up.

This basic JSON file upload process shows how effective this process can be.

• Liberty continues to maintain its current dispatch, scheduling and billing systems, capturing data in the field on Android tablets that can function online or offline.
• Collection work orders are gathered into one or more deliveries and defined as a claim in Liberty’s Tower system. Options are available to add supporting electronic documents to the package.
• A JSON file is exported and then uploaded into PICTUS. In more modern design this is accomplished by an application programming interface, or API.
• PICTUS provides immediate objective feedback about the claim, identifying exceptions generated from approximately 100 rules that each claim and claim line is subjected to.
• While initially there were many exceptions, 6 months after implementation the exception rate has dropped dramatically and the data quality has improved.

This solution reduced Liberty’s data entry efforts while also eliminating keying errors. At the same time, it re-focused TSBC efforts away from repetitive manual claim auditing now done by the rules engine, so more effort could be spent on the process and exception follow up.  It also eliminated a significant amount of paper. Under this pilot project, TSBC objectives were achieved and so TSBC intends to roll out an electronic field data collection system for all the haulers.

Lessons Learned for Future Projects

The pilot project was a success, however the work was unable to include all of the haulers involved in the TSBC ecosystem. Future projects will look to expanding options so that all transporters, including smaller contract haulers, are able to use electronic data capture.