Introducing ROMS Lite
The Recycling Operations Management System (ROMS) has 2 flavours, a full version and one restricted to operations. This page will address the flavor that deals with operations. Full ROMS includes the configuration elements as well as operations. This begs the question of why this is necessary? There are 2 main reasons. The primary reason is response times. We have customers who are adding close to 10,000 records at a time and the 'older' architecture (although industry standard) has a latency , the new architecture does not - 10,000 entries takes less than a second. The second reason is to separate operations and configuration. Full ROMS is for larger operators and requires a lot of setup which, although needs only to be done once, is a lot of work (and cost) initially. ROMS Lite may use a fully configured flavor or a more generic one which is pre-configured. The pre-configured version is no less powerful but is akin to using a template. This page will take you through the typical uses of an Ewaste/ITAD operator, certified (R2V3, for example) or not. Typically, you will add stock, then process that stock. test it, grade it then either sell it as a working item or sell it as scrap after extracting whatever value exists.
An essential element of any ITAD/Ewaste operator is to add incoming material to the system. We need to know what is being added, where it came from and where it is in the overall process. The first thing to note is that the range and diversity of what can come through the door is huge so there needs to be a mechanism to categorize this. More on this later but without this a 'Del' and a 'Dell' laptop (a simple typo) are now different items.
A further benefit of using ROMS Lite is that you both leverage and contribute to the knowledge base of everything that can come through the door. You may not have seen a DR4000 before but the chances are high that another user has, so you have all the metadata on a DR4000 already there. In the example shown in the image, we are adding at the item level, but the begining of the process is often a pallet or gaylord of 'stuff' that just has to be weighed in and will be itemized later. More on how this works later in this page.
As each item comes off the truck and into the system, ROMS will generate a barcoded label for each entry.
Add Stock
Once you have added stock to ROMS you are going to want to process it in some way. Process Stock is where this happens. Everything in the warehouse is visible in the grid. There are multiple filter criteria available plus extensive search capabilities. Clicking on any column title will sort the grid accordingly. From here, after selecting the grid items, they can be sold, scrapped, moved, details sent to buyers and more. The grid itself displays the key properties of each item such as where it came from, when it arrived and options exist to color code each row depending on its progress through whatever your process is.
Process Stock
At times you may wish to edit any given stock item; change R2V3 parameters, add notes or change the grade, for example. This may have been a shrink wrapped pallet recently received but not yet processed. This is where you would audit this item - start breaking it down into the items that are in the gaylord or on the pallet. this is also where positional barcodes come in. We have an app where the user scans the item, then scans the positional barcode (which is physically located on a pallet rack, for example) then this is all saved to ROMS. You can view any RecycleWipe data from here too. This is any testing data, everything inside the unit and any datawipe details. Deductions are where you set cosmetic details, broken hinge, missing keys, crack in casing etc.
Edit Stock
ROMS Lite contains a complete CRM. From this page you can see everything about the customer from basic details to invoices, equipment received, pickups, purchase orders, interractions, data bearing devices, sales activity and more. Any customer may be granted access to whatever elements of their data you authorise. So, for example a customer may pull datawipe certificates or resale revenues themselves rather than you having to send them. You may also grant customers access at the 'Facility' level whereby they may use your ROMS instance as a complete stand-alone Asset Management system - when something needs to be recycle all they need to do is a mouse click.
The tabs in green represent secondary functions. THe current tab shows buyer preferences. I ROMS detects 10 Dell Inspiron I3 in stock it may be instructed to automatically send a sales advice email. Customers are always linked to a default Processor as you can see in Linked Location. This is the default recycling facility for that customer.
Customer Page
The potential range of different items that may come through the door or off the truck is staggering. Just the variety of commodities alone is huge. Add to this the models of just desktops and their components and you are already in the thousands. We use a simple but effective 3 level system to manage this diversity. A Category, Subcategory and Template. The image shown is pretty self explanatory but now imagine Laptop, Dell, Laptop Model. The lower level we call a Template which stores the default metadata about the item. this is usefull because when entering stock, all you have to do is identify the template and now you already know everything about the item. There are also different types of template - a service template type does not consist of anything physical. For example a datawipe of a hard drive is a service as is a pickup charge but they are not the same as traditional 'stock' items.
How we Categorize Everything
ROMS works in tandem with other Recyclesoft owned and developed software. One of these is Recyclewipe. This is a standalone Linux application (PXEboot enabled) that tests devices and wipes hard drives, either individually (in a laptop being tested, for example) or loose in a container of multiple hard drives. The Dashboard is a visual, realtime display of everything currently being tested or wiped and where it is in the process. All data is transmitted to ROMS for reporting and archiving.
The current tab shows Container Mode which are all loose hard drives being wiped in an array. The Host Barcode is the serial # of the container.
Datawipe Dashboard
Knowing the progress of any Job through your process is essential. In ROMS, you define whatever your process steps are and these will be displayed in the dropdown shown in orange. A hyperlink to the job will show all details related to the job including test status, sales information and time spent by each employee on the job (and their role). Everything in the grid is data driven and you are even able to define new datapoints that may be important for your process. ROMS contains a complete time and billing module which links employee activity to jobs.
Process Throughput
The New Standard for Global Recycling Reporting
Real-time worldwide recycling reporting with accuracy down to to a single pound of material.