Driving Value Through Digital Enablement & Operational Excellence
Divert is revolutionizing the food and food waste industry by becoming a circular economy company. Food waste is a major issue for grocery stores, restaurant chains, and many others around the world. Divert is helping convert this “waste” into consumable energy, making it valuable to our needs and ecosystem. They are changing the world in a revolutionary way as the leading circular economy company in the United States.
With this revolutionary approach to making the world a better place, Divert was growing into the automated economy at a fast rate. With this growth came friction and scalability issues exposing lack of automation and disparate data across the enterprise and with their partners.
Divert was also working with many national and global organizations with high expectations around data integration and delivery services. As their clientele grew, the need for data exchange and information shared between them and their clients grew as well.
Digital Enablement Challenges
Divert’s rapid facility expansion and scaling business requirements created significant operational inefficiencies threatening service quality and growth. They faced critical gaps in automation, real-time visibility, and data-driven decision-making across their processing operations.
Manual processes, unreliable tracking systems, and lack of integrated technology were creating bottlenecks that limited operational efficiency and customer insights.
Recognizing the urgent need for comprehensive operational automation and data-driven decisions, Divert approached Cooperative Computing to help them become digitally enabled to accelerate into the automated economy.
Operational Visibility Gaps Limiting Scale and Performance
Divert’s ambitious growth strategy, while successful in building market presence, created a complex web of operational challenges severely impacting their ability to scale efficiently and deliver consistent value to customers. The organization struggled with multiple critical issues across their processing facilities that collectively threatened their competitive position and growth trajectory.
Process and Technology Challenges
Bin & Data Management: Divert was challenged effectively managing bin inventory across the distribution center network, with no visibility into real-time data and bin status, location, or optimal inventory levels needed at each retail distribution center.
Bin & Trailer Transaction Visibility: They experienced unreliable scanning, weighing, and association of bins to retail stores for invoicing, coupled with lack of automated reporting to provide store-level analytics and waste insights.
Material Imbalance: They were unable to capture accurate net in and net out weights throughout the waste processing data workflow, from initial receipt through slurry production and residual management.
Transportation Management: They experienced challenges with scheduling and tracking trailers when deviations occur from base schedules. With approximately 250 trailers, they managed transportation via text messaging, email, and spreadsheets before.
Limited Waste Insights: Divert did not have the ability to itemize and categorize bin contents. This kept them from providing analytics to help retail customers optimize their waste reduction and markdown programs.
Foreign Object Detection: They were unable to effectively detect, document, and remove non-compliant items such as glass, metal, wood, and trash, posing risks to processing equipment and product quality.
Comprehensive Operational Automation & Real-Time Digital Enablement
Recognizing the complexity and interconnected nature of Divert’s challenges, Cooperative Computing implemented a comprehensive Digital Enablement Strategy designed to address systemic issues while building sustainable competitive advantages through automation, real-time visibility, and data-driven insights.
Digital Maturity Assessment
Cooperative Computing conducted an extensive evaluation of Divert’s operational capabilities across seven critical business impact areas, identifying root causes behind operational inefficiencies. The Digital Maturity Assessment revealed that while individual facilities had developed localized solutions, the lack of enterprise-wide standardization and automation was creating multiplicative negative effects across the organization.
Key findings included fragmented manual processes preventing real-time visibility, inconsistent data capture across locations, and inadequate technology infrastructure to support intelligent automation and advanced analytics.
Digital Maturity Strategy
The Strategy phase of the Digital Maturity Experience involved designing an integrated future state enabling Divert to automate processes and make data-driven decisions to scale their business and make a broader impact on the world.
Their Digital Maturity Strategy emphasized three critical modernization phases listed below.
Phase 1: Error-Free Billing & Real-Time Inventory Visibility
Deploy modular RFID/weight capture system integrated with real-time reporting and analytics to eliminate errors in customer billing data capture and automate invoicing. Implement bin inventory and lightweight transportation management system providing real-time visibility and analytics across distribution centers and facility yards.
Phase 2: Modular Plant Automation
Deploy waste inspection and sorting system with integrated non-compliant waste detection and routing. Implement automated material balance and reporting with integrated analytics. Enable continuous flow operations through automation and intelligent process management.
Phase 3: Advanced Customer Value Programs
Deploy integrated machine intelligence facilitating waste identification and classification, providing advanced waste insights for customer value programs and sellable food waste datasets. Implement enterprise-scale transportation management system with integrated customer scheduling and predictive fleet management.
Digital Maturity Execution
The execution of the strategy centered on scalable, replicable digital technology solutions designed for rapid deployment across multiple facility locations to include the following.
Enterprise Data & Analytics Platform
- Digital Data Hub™ for centralized data management
- Power BI visualization dashboards for operational insights
- API integrations with their Microsoft ERP for automated billing
- Microsoft Azure cloud environment supporting development, staging, and production
Enterprise Rollout Strategy
Each facility received a standardized digital technology stack with site-specific customizations, ensuring consistent capabilities while accommodating local operational requirements.
Exceptional Results: Scalable Foundation for Growth
Following implementation of the Digital Enablement Strategy, Divert achieved dramatic operational improvements across their processing network, establishing the foundation for efficient scaling to 30 integrated plants.
Enhanced Operational Automation
Automated bin inventory visibility across distribution centers and facility yards enabled proactive management of inventory levels and distribution. Computer vision-based inspection systems automated foreign object detection and waste categorization, improving throughput while capturing valuable customer insights.
Improved Business Performance
The modernization delivered measurable operational improvements across multiple dimensions:
Billing Accuracy: Elimination of manual errors in customer billing through automated RFID and weight capture, ensuring accurate revenue recognition and customer trust.
Inventory Management: Real-time visibility into bin inventory status, locations, and demand patterns across the enterprise, optimizing working capital and service levels.
Customer Insights: Advanced waste analytics and categorization enabling premium customer value programs and data monetization opportunities.
Operational Efficiency: Automated workflows and continuous flow operations improving facility throughput and labor productivity.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Real-time analytics and integrated reporting capabilities enabled leadership to make informed decisions quickly, identifying opportunities for continuous improvement and proactive issue resolution. Centralized data warehouse and visualization dashboards provided unprecedented visibility into operational performance across the facility network.
Scalable Growth Platform
Standardized digital technology architecture and proven implementation methodology enabled rapid replication across new facility locations. Template-based deployment approach reduced time-to-value for new facilities while ensuring consistent operational capabilities and data quality.
Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Through comprehensive operational automation and digital enablement, Divert evolved from a manually intensive operation into an intelligent, data-driven industry leader positioned for aggressive growth. The scalable technology foundation and proven implementation approach position Divert to efficiently expand to 30 integrated plants processing 3,000 tons of food waste daily while delivering superior customer value through advanced waste insights and operational excellence.
The digital enablement strategy has positioned Divert to capitalize on its expanded operational footprint effectively, delivering consistent value to retail customers while maintaining the operational efficiency and data capabilities necessary for profitable growth at scale.
Divert is another example of an enterprise leveraging a digital enablement strategy focused on hyper-personalization, hyper-automation, and data-driven decisions to accelerate into the automated economy.
When your organization is looking to grow revenue and operate more efficiently with data-driven decisions, contact one of our Digital Enablement specialists to start your digital journey.
