Published: April 3, 2025
Welcome to the latest in our special series of Resoundingly Human podcasts highlighting the finalist teams for the 2025 Franz Edelman Award, the Nobel Prize of Analytics, which will be awarded at the upcoming 2025 INFORMS Analytics+ Conference in Indianapolis this April.
These finalist projects represent teams from around the world who have leveraged advanced analytics to transform their organizations, address their most significant challenges, and better serve their customers and communities. Today I’m joined by members of the team representing WM to discuss their finalist project in the leadup to the Franz Edelman competition.
The collaboration between our teams was really the differentiator in really making this work. At WM, we’ve actually tried this twice over the last 15 years, to use data and analytics to dynamically route our industrial line of business and we weren’t successful frankly. The collaboration of our teams coming together to dynamically optimize 22,000 customer services across 500 hauling sites and 4,000 routes a day was a herculean effort. If you think about getting all of the data right that has to happen, and has to be correct behind that, that’s no small task. So building an optimizer that can handle that much data and produce 4,000 routes in 45-minutes every night for tomorrow took a lot from our team, of the operations research team and data and analytics. Beyond that really getting our field team to trust the optimization, really working with them hand-in-hand to test the solution and let them see it before it went live is what really helped in that collaboration. To get all the field roles involved, even all the way down to our drivers, to get them involved, to get their feedback.
Interviewed this episode:
Marcel Dalby
WM
Marcel Dalby is the vice president of collections operations and business optimization at WM overseeing the optimization efforts across company’s collection operations, fleet, disposal, indusial automation, routing & logistics, and recycling operations. His team is responsible to drive cost savings, increase efficiencies and improve overall customer service through the implementation of innovative technologies and improved enterprise business processes. He previously led WM’s collection and landfill operations in Jacksonville, Florida with responsibility for area operations, sales, service, strategic planning, and financial performance. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration Management degree from Texas State University.
Hema Pillutla
WM
Hema Pillutla is the senior director of innovation and business optimization at WM leading the operations decision science function. His team is responsible for the development of operations research, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytical capabilities in the areas of network, facility, fleet, routing, and logistics strategy and optimization. He previously held technology, engineering & analytics leadership roles enabling revenue growth and operational efficiencies for multiple industries. Hema received his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Osmania University India, MS degree in environmental engineering from The University of Memphis and MBA with supply chain & finance focus from University of Houston. Hema is a co-inventor on seven patents.
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Transcript pending.