Our customers asked, and we’ve delivered. We're incredibly excited to announce a major upgrade to Alerts, one of Analyzer's most popular features. That’s not all we’re announcing, though – alongside this milestone software update, we’re also unveiling a new, more sustainable design for the Greyparrot Analyzer unit.
After finding that Alerts helped them adapt to changes in waste composition faster, our customers asked for even more alerting capabilities.
Analyzer Alerts are now more detailed, flexible and easy-to-access than ever. It’s all part of our mission to turn real time waste data into actionable insights that unlock lean operations for recovery facilities.
An early warning system for contamination spikes and throughput drops
Running a profitable sorting or recycling plant requires a delicate balance of throughput and sorting efficiency. Without real-time monitoring, the blockages and composition changes impact product quality aren't evident until it's too late.
The Alerts feature was created to notify operators of dips in purity and other sudden changes in material composition based on their facility’s thresholds. When composition shifts beyond those thresholds, an Alert notification enables them to diagnose and respond to the issue in real time.
Turning more powerful Alerts into profitable resource recovery
Analyzer's updated notification system features new types of Alerts and more ways to view notifications. Flexible reporting options make it easier than ever for plant managers to act on shifts in capacity and purity.
“We know that if our customers can react quickly to sudden drops in purity, unexplained increases in downtime or value lost to residue – and even start predicting these events – their facilities will be more efficient and profitable. Enabling predictive actions and faster response times can mean the difference between profitability and losses.”
- Gaspard Duthilleul, Greyparrot COO
Here’s how the new Alerts features help them do it:
1. Diagnose and resolve purity dips faster
What we’ve introduced: New Alert types to notify our customers about the mass and item count of specific materials, or the mass and item count of the overall waste stream.
With new Alerts for specific materials, overall mass and item counts, our customers get more detailed insight into spikes in contaminants and overall throughput. They can take fast, targeted action in response.
Quicker responses to a drop in purity can save tens of thousands of pounds.
Customer story: In one European materials recovery facility (MRF), Analyzer notified staff of a purity drop that they traced to machinery faults. By diagnosing the fault in under 12 minutes (instead of 38 hours at their next scheduled spot sample), the team returned purity to acceptable levels in just 35 minutes. Fast action helped them avoid reprocessing costs that would have cost over £47,000.
If Alerts for overall mass and item count indicate the belt isn’t processing enough material or running empty, facility managers can take action to increase throughput. When throughput is too high, they can reduce belt speeds and waste volume to avoid purity dips.
2. Display actionable insights where they count
What we’ve introduced: A new Alerts dashboard, featuring customisable dashboard views that group Alerts by belt or use-case.
Displaying pre-saved Alerts dashboard views on key belts throughout a facility gives operators instant visibility into the performance thresholds for each individual line.
Customer story: A plastics recovery facility (PRF) wanted to know when the amount of recoverable PET on their residue line exceeds acceptable levels — Analyzer uncovered £1.6 million worth of recyclable plastics being lost to residue every year.
With this latest feature update, our customers and their team can now create Alert thresholds for those valuable materials, then display a pre-saved residue Alerts dashboard on a screen next to the belt, or view it from their control room. When PET spikes, they’ll know that action is needed to improve sorting on those specific product lines.
3. Reduce avoidable losses and downtime
What we’ve introduced: Exportable summary reports for past Alerts.
New Alerts summary reports help our customers identify trends that point the way to higher yields, and maximised plant capacity.
Alerts summaries can surface insights that spur targeted action, like:
- Proactively reducing throughput rates when Alerts flag material spikes that commonly cause blockages.
- Correlating specific suppliers with dips in purity, and take action to improve infeed material quality.
- Identifying performance trends for specific shifts to prioritise staff training, or make a business case for sorting machinery.
Those insights can mean the difference between profitability and major losses.
Customer story: In one facility, Alerts revealed a consistent purity dip of 4% on a key aluminium line — the difference between delivering the quality their customers expected, or underperforming. That information helped staff make a clear business case for improving sorting efficiency, protecting around £19,000 for every batch of aluminium.
Another US-based recovery facility reviewed historical data to find out how newly-purchased sorting machinery was performing. An increase in Alerts revealed that purity dropped from 93% to 80% on a daily basis after the machinery’s introduction — costing them a potential £240,000 each year.
The insight enabled the facility’s manager to request crucial machinery recalibration, and avoid the long-term loss.
Introducing our next-generation Analyzer units
The new alerting features are compatible with existing Analyzer units, but we're also excited to be rolling out new, sustainably designed hardware:
The smaller, lighter design means they're easier to retrofit in tight spaces without adjusting facility infrastructure. Designed, created, and built in the UK, the new units are made from lightweight, recyclable components. A new GPU means they're up to 15% more energy-efficient than previous versions, too.
Read more about the new Analyzer units here.
