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Residuals Information System
A water supply company produces just water, right?! Yes, but this project showed that these companies do a lot more than just that. Read the full story of how we helped Vitens manage flows of residual material.
Much more than just water
Water supply company Vitens produces very high quality drinking water for around 6 million customers in the Netherlands. After the water is pumped up from one of their wells, it goes through several steps such as filtering out small contaminants and substances like chalk and iron. This process results in major waste streams which always meant significant costs for the company.
This situation did however change recently as there are more and more usefull applications for these residuals in other industries. Costs suddenly turned into revenues and accurate monitoring of the streams became much more important.
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The challenge for Outline Solutions was the development of a system in which all residual flows from all locations were monitored. All operators and managers had to gain insight into both production quantities, quality and financial parameters. An important objective was to be able to analyse each production facility and to assess the extent to which their processes had to be optimized.
Rapid prototyping, fluid as water
At the beginning of this project we worked intensively with management in order to understand the challenge thoroughly. Based on interviews we did however conclude that modeling the process turned out to be more complex than expected due to the many exceptions that kept popping up.
We therefore decided to quickly build a first minimal viable solution that could then be further refined. Based on periodic consultations, the system has been further developed and adapted, while existing work processes were being critically examined.
Realtime monitoring
The end result of this project was a system that is used daily and is updated by many employees. It was also a crucial application for getting a grip on the flows of residuals by providing realtime insights into quantities, quality and financial aspects.