Since 2014, Damifo (Dansk Miljøforbedring A/S) has distinguished itself as an important player in the green transition in Denmark. The environmental company offers competent, innovative solutions within the construction and recycling industry, and takes pride in delivering on the government's goal of CO2 neutral waste management in 2030.
In order to achieve this goal, it is crucial that private companies like Damifo dare to take the lead and make the strategic investments needed to utilize available resources in a more intelligent and sustainable way. Damifo's stated vision is to recycle virtually everything they receive. Partly through breakdown into fractions, purification and qualification, but also through upcycling.
Digitization drives green transition
In order to realize it’s high level of ambition and meet the applicable legal requirements, Damifo's founder John Kaldahl decided, as part of the company's growth plans, to investigate the possibilities of digitizing and automating the core processes to the greatest possible extent. John therefore contacted Thomas Riisager from Dcide, who has helped a lot of companies optimize and digitize their business processes. This was the starting point for a project, that quickly proved digitization a golden opportunity for green transition.
The initial analysis
"It quickly became clear that the organization's digital maturity was limited. Incidentally, this is the rule rather than the exception when we look at the Danish SMB landscape," explains Thomas Riisager.
Registration of in- and outgoing deliveries and the intermediate case management took place in a combination of an older weighing system, a quite advanced Excel solution and the company's financial system. But first of all, Excel cannot handle the amount of data required. At the same time, it meant that data had to be manually transferred between systems, instead of parsing seamlessly through a structured workflow.
Uncovering possible solutions
"Based on our analysis, we decided to update the weighing system to ensure that direct integration of weighing data (in- and outgoing) could be established". This minimizes the risk of errors and supports traceability of all fractions.” explains Thomas Riisager.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central was high on the list of possible solutions. Implementation of an integrated ERP system would provide the necessary overview of product flows and ensure traceability. However, Damifo’s need for case management support is not standard functionality in the Microsoft solution. This would require a big investment. At the same time, a replacement of the core financial system would be quite a challenge for the environmental company, which in the same period experienced significant growth in the number of weigh-ins." says Thomas Riisager and continues...
Narrowing the choice of technology
"Furthermore, the initial analysis showed that Damifo had a very good handle on all the manual processes. Therefore, we assessed that the ideal solution would be to replicate these digitally. Consequently, we decided to direct our focus towards low- and no-code technologies, which excel in relation to special adaptation of data models and workflows.” explains Thomas Riisager.
"After comparing different platforms, we decided to go with the TS No-code Platform. Partly because it is a Danish-developed platform, so help is just around the corner if you need it, but especially because it runs deeper, delivers superior security, and effortlessly handles very large amounts of data. In addition, the platform is very modest in terms of hardware requirements, so in itself it supports sustainability," notes Thomas Riisager.
Go-live in record time
We put together an internal project group with the right skills and arranged a workshop with a couple of consultants from TS. During just one workshop, we had the use cases down and the data model outlined, and a few days later we were up and running with a fully functional test system. We carried out a number of planned test cases and corrected the application in accordance with our findings before Go-live.
Scalable case management
Today, the entire case management takes place in the application. Based on weighings, item codes and quantities, the system automatically generates the required samples and the employees responsible for sampling are notified. Samples are sent for analysis and the test results are recorded on the specific case. Thus, full traceability can be established on all fractions and classifications.
Relevant dashboards ensure an overview of the total number of cases and their current status. In this way, we have obtained a solid basis for making the right decisions. So far, weighings are recorded manually in the system. The advantage of this is that we have been able to validate data integrity in all process steps. Next step is to integrate with the new weighing system, so that weighing-in and weighing-out data are automatically exchanged.
Digitization of the core processes has already shown results both in relation to resource allocation and overview. In addition, the application is hosted in a redundant cloud environment, which means that we have strengthened the security, availability and integrity of our business-critical data. At the same time, we can, manage several sites as we expand. All in the same system, from a central location.
"Yes, the outlook is positive. Not just in Denmark, but all over the world there is an increasing focus on the environment. Slowly but surely, it is dawning on companies that this is an area that must be taken seriously.” says John Kaldahl.
“Our digital journey has only just begun. But it means that in the future we will be able to handle much larger volumes with much greater benefits for people and the environment," John Kaldahl concludes, as he walks towards the weighing booth, where a large gate-green lorry filled with demolition concrete is about to "step onto" the bridge scale.