<\/p>\n
Republic Services makes five million pickups nationwide every day, coordinating 18,000 trucks in the process. It\u2019s not a logistics firm or a freight shipping powerhouse, but one of America\u2019s largest trash haulers. Managing that operation\u2014fuel, labor, routes\u2014requires a commitment to operational efficiency that verges on the obsessive.<\/p>\n
Marvis Kisakye, a Republic Services analyst who uses location software to speed up processes and save time across the enterprise, is a standout in this drive to optimize operations. She\u2019s a member of a specialized team that employs geographic information system (GIS) technology to tackle some of the company\u2019s toughest operations management challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always been a problem-solver,\u201d Kisakye says. \u201cI look at situations and [think], \u2018I don\u2019t like how this is. This should be improved.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Supporting a workforce of over 40,000, Kisakye has used GIS technology to help drivers plan their routes and calculate how far EV trucks can travel before recharging. On one project, she helped add over a million missing streets to the company\u2019s routing maps, including alleys and rural roads. In another instance, the tools she developed helped the company link dumpster containers with customer accounts, improving the accuracy of billing and recouping millions in revenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer appetite for learning is really, really, really high,\u201d says Jim Smith, a 20-year GIS veteran and a colleague of Kisakye\u2019s at Republic Services. \u201c[She] wants to do not only what they ask her to do as far as functionality, but to exceed it.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tackling Operational Efficiency with GIS<\/strong><\/p>\n Across industries, GIS is becoming an engine for operational efficiency, powering faster routes and increasing productivity. The technology can be found across the enterprise, with GIS analysts working in operations, on supply chain teams, and in strategic planning divisions.<\/p>\n At Republic Services, multiple departments use GIS: It helps thousands of trucks reach millions of customers, powers online portals where clients can check service availability in their area, and allows managers to track how long vehicles remain in warehouses for tune-ups.<\/p>\n The GIS R&D team\u2014composed of Kisakye, Smith, and their supervisor, Daniel Dreiling\u2014applies innovation and experimentation to help the company achieve more using fewer resources. That made it a perfect fit for Kisakye, who thrives on autonomy and combines spatial thinking with the mindset of a developer.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of unique problems that happen out in the field,\u201d says Dreiling, who handpicked Kisakye for her role. \u201cYou\u2019d think picking up trash is easy but there\u2019s a lot of different idiosyncrasies that happen.\u201d And they often take on a massive scale.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s effort to add missing alleys, backstreets, and new roads to route maps felt like one such challenge. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about filling in roads for the entire country,\u201d Kisakye says. \u201cA lot of people were like . . . \u2018You can\u2019t undertake such a task. It\u2019s impossible; it\u2019s ridiculous; it\u2019s a nightmare.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, without precise maps of the country\u2019s roadways, the company couldn\u2019t verify whether drivers were taking their assigned routes\u2014an important measure of efficiency.<\/p>\n For Kisakye, this all sounded like a juicy opportunity. Today, thanks to the creative use of location data and a custom GIS toolkit developed by Kisakye, Republic Services\u2019 maps have the accuracy drivers and managers need.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Following a GIS Career Path to Opportunity<\/strong><\/p>\n Kisakye sees operational challenges as puzzles to solve. Earlier in her life, she faced constraints that were far less rewarding.<\/p>\n Kisakye grew up in Kampala, the lively capital city of Uganda in East Africa, where motorbikes rev through streets crowded by vendors and dance clubs pulse late into the night.<\/p>\n While she absorbed the city\u2019s hustle and entrepreneurial energy, the future she imagined felt narrow. Her parents\u2014and those of her friends\u2014saw three acceptable careers for their children: doctor, lawyer, or engineer.<\/p>\n She studied civil engineering in college and discovered GIS technology through land surveying courses. The applications excited her, but there were only three computers for every 100 students.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember always being frustrated and thinking, \u2018I could do this and this and this, and I could be here and here,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cIt was a frustrating place to be in\u2014to feel helpless, where you know you have the brain to do stuff, but you\u2019re limited by resources.\u201d<\/p>\n When her boyfriend (now husband) was offered a job at Intel in Arizona, Kisakye saw an opportunity to widen her horizons. Enrolling in a master\u2019s-level GIS program at Arizona State University, she discovered that every student was assigned their own computer. \u201cI can research all the stuff I\u2019ve always wanted to research,\u201d she thought excitedly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Turning Maps and Apps into Tools for Action<\/strong><\/p>\n After finishing her master\u2019s program and completing a stint at the Arizona Department of Health Services, Kisakye eventually found herself in Republic Services\u2019 R&D department\u2014a place that rewarded her self-starter approach and passion for making an impact. Self-taught in several programming languages, she builds GIS-based tools and applications that make rote processes more efficient. Over time, these operational improvements add up to big savings in time and money.<\/p>\n Her bias for action was ignited when she heard about the service maps that finance administrators use to track business divisions across the country. The division boundaries frequently shift as service areas grow or shrink, and updating these maps every month or quarter consumed weeks of time. Kisakye created a GIS tool that automates the sequence, populating maps with new assets that formerly had to be added manually. A process that once took up to a month now requires 20 to 30 minutes.<\/p>\n Her work on finding dumpster containers that were unaccounted for also involved an intuitive solution to a long-standing challenge. Smith figured out that by tracing the movements of trucks, they could determine which containers were used by which customers. Marvis incorporated that model into a GIS application that\u2019s now used across the company, improving process performance by 86 percent, making billing more precise, and increasing cash flow.<\/p>\n Making the lives of drivers easier has always been a concern of Kisakye\u2019s. She spotted an opportunity to do exactly that when she saw the maps drivers used in pre-trip planning: often hand-drawn or printed out and annotated with pens.<\/p>\n She built a GIS program that automates the creation of route maps. The software zeroes in on clusters of customers and produces maps that show logistics analysts and drivers where they need to go and how best to plan their routes, aiding operational efficiency.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Faced with Challenges, an Attitude That Sees Only Opportunities<\/strong><\/p>\n For as long as she can remember, Kisakye has loved solving problems and finding ways to streamline tasks. Now, equipped with digital tools and information, the possibilities seem limitless.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can do anything,\u201d she says, giving voice to the attitude that has shaped her into a force for change at Republic Services. \u201cYou have everything you need to do whatever you want. So, what\u2019s stopping you?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Republic Services makes five million pickups nationwide every day, coordinating 18,000 trucks in the process. It\u2019s not a logistics firm or a freight shipping powerhouse, but one of America\u2019s largest trash haulers. Managing that operation\u2014fuel, labor, routes\u2014requires a commitment to operational efficiency that verges…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":52436,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[379],"class_list":["post-52442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-en","tag-route-optimization"],"yoast_head":"\n