10 reasons why scrap operators are choosing the AMCS Platform to take their business to the next level

Scrap metal recycling is a business that requires a great deal of expertise and experience in order to develop greater business efficiencies and maximize profit margins.

Volatile markets require constant monitoring to ensure you achieve the best purchase and sale prices, you’ve got to deal with detailed logistics and keep your employees safe, while yard inventory has to be efficiently managed.

From the very largest multi-national scrap metal businesses to the small family yard, the most successful non-ferrous and ferrous recyclers need a comprehensive enterprise management software solution to provide them with the necessary process automation, visibility, and control of business operations.

The AMCS Platform has a proven track record of delivering better business outcomes for high-value commodity recyclers in the fiber, organics, and plastics sectors.

Greater depth of domain functionality in AMCS Platform now supports the specific requirements of the scrap metal industry in areas such as regulatory compliance, peddler weigh and pay requirements as well as real-time inventory management and valuation.

In this article, we will look at the 10 reasons why scrap operators are now choosing the AMCS Platform for Metal to take their business to the next level.

1. Master your Transport Operations to control and reduce your freight costs

Transport operations are one of the key cost centers under your direct control and greater automation in this area ensures that you are optimizing the planning and execution of collection schedules across your fleet.

The AMCS Transport Management System is the most advanced logistics solution providing a range of planning tools such as built-in digital maps, distance and time calculators, on-demand optimization services, real-time tracking, driver mobile, and telematics.

It covers all of the scrap collection models such as luggers, Roll-Off, and round collections with flat bed trucks for packaged scrap.

It provides comprehensive detailed tracking of internal transport costs by vehicle type, as well as those of third-party haulers that you may use so you can track your cost per load and margins.

2. Actively Track and Manage your Container Assets to increase your ROI

Container assets such as Roll Offs are expensive, so it is essential to protect this investment and maximize their use; ensuring that you have sufficient container inventory for deployment available and guaranteeing containers are turning over regularly enough to generate a financial return.

The AMCS Platform provides this visibility and control and can also automatically trigger rental changes to ensure that these container assets are generating a return for your business at all times.

3. Maximize your visibility on inventory and valuation to make smarter decisions

With upwards of 500+ separate inventory classifications in a yard at any one time it is critical to understand every aspect of your inventory( e.g. classification, status, location, etc.) and its valuation at a very detailed level.

How much inventory is there in each classification? What is its current status ( raw, work in progress, finished goods)? Where is it located How much has it cost to produce finished goods? What gross margin can I forecast based on my cost valuation and the likely sale price?

Access to this information will allow you to make smart and timely decisions that impact your business such as managing your cost base and margins.

Our superior Inventory Management solution provides you with real-time inventory valuation based on up-to-the-minute access to inventory data including all relevant costs based on a weighted average cost method. This means you know what is available to sell and at what cost, allowing for gross margin projection.

It tracks and records all costs on a weighted average basis across a monthly reporting period.

Moreover, the AMCS Mobile Yard Management module provides a record of metal inventory in the yard that will be constantly updated with our new cycle counting feature so you have accurate and reliable information to rely on.

Indeed, Mobile Yard Management helps inspection and grading of material, allowing adjustments to be made for non-conformities. This means the charging of extra processing fees can be automated when the material does not meet the desired specification.

4. Automate contract and price management to drive your margins

The AMCS Platform pricing engine offers best-in-class configuration and automation to protect and enhance margins.

Key pricing features for the scrap industry include:

• Pricing linked to agreed Base Rate or Market Index less a cost per tonne offset etc. The estimated price shown is displayed before pricing is finalized. This reduces administration, risk of errors and allows you to track a real-time pricing position.
• Tiered pricing to incentivize sellers to provide optimal agreed tonnage in container loads and agreed-on tonnages over a billing period.
• Material grading and inspection adjustments captured on the Mobile Yard Management system will automatically update pricing.
• Multi-level hierarchical pricing engine designed to ensure that you always have access to the correct price for a client for each scrap type defaulted up to four levels on our price hierarchy.

Optimized price automation eliminates the administration, costs, delays and errors involved when carrying out pricing semi-manually.

5. Automate and integrate your scrap recycling value chain

The AMCS Platform automates and integrates each sequential process in your recycling value chain thus guaranteeing that you have full visibility on your enterprise-wide data and control across all your operations.

All information that is recorded or entered across the Platform (be it in a customer/supplier portal, at the scale or in a mobile yard application) is updated in real-time and available to all users.

The full scope of the solution includes:

• Transport and freight
• Scale Weigh and Pay
• Grading and inspection of material
• Contract and price management
• Invoicing, Finance (AP/AR), and Business Intelligence
• Production Planning (e.g., Shredding) and Management
• Mobile yard management
• Inventory management and Valuation
• Material sales
• Brokerage
• Demand planning
• Outbound Logistics
• Digital Engagement with suppliers and haulers

6. Engage digitally with your haulers to deliver administration savings

Most scrap operators make use of third-party haulers to manage collections of scrap, as well as deliveries of finished goods. Much of this engagement with partners is done via manual, time-consuming processes like email, spreadsheets, and over the phone. These processes can lead to large administration costs, potential manual errors, re-keying mistakes, and end-of-month delays on billing.

The AMCS Hauler Portal allows you to fully digitalize the exchange of orders, data, and billing between you and third-party haulers.

all orders are digitally exchanged, including confirmations, tickets, and invoices using the portal which will also store all current agreed prices, licenses, and other details.

This control and automation allow you to operate an asset-light model by making efficient use of third-party haulers.

7. Engage digitally with your Scrap Suppliers and Customers

Our Scrap Supplier/Customer Portal allows customers to view and download documentation like tickets, reports, payments, etc. It also allows them to request services on their Roll-Offs (deliver, exchange, swap) with 24/7 self-serve, thus reducing contact center calls, emails, and associated costs and delays.

8. Grow your business on the scrap industries only true SaaS-based Enterprise Solution

The AMCS Platform is a SaaS solution (subscription cloud service) designed to offer the highest levels of scalability, security, and availability for large enterprise customers. It has a modern and intuitive User Experience, easy to navigate with guided workflows designed around the roles of key users such as transport planners, scale operators, graders, etc. It is designed to maximize user productivity and ensure rapid user adoption. The browser interface can be operated securely anywhere, on any device at any time, thus boosting the productivity of remote and mobile workers such as drivers, sales, staff working from home, and yard staff.

This is a solution designed to operate across multiple yards, territories, and countries with multi-company and multi-currency support.

9. Boost the productivity of your yard staff by empowering them with our Mobile Yard Management application

The AMCS Mobile Yard Management application is designed to automate all aspects of the inspection and break down all scrap loads. It allows the operator to take images of each load, as well as break down the material by percentage and weight. In addition, the user can make adjustments that can lead to financial adjustments (such as changes to the price paid or charged), reflecting a re-classification of the scrap and/or extra processing charges.

The AMCS Mobile Yard Management application is fully integrated with the AMCS Platform, so data such as material images and price adjustments are automatically updated across the system and available to all users such as suppliers and finance staff.

10. Leverage the unrivaled AMCS Global Scrap Metal Recycling expertise to drive best practice automation

The AMCS Platform reflects our experience in serving over 600+ scrap operators worldwide which range from global multinationals to smaller family-owned enterprises.

We have a global scrap metal software team with over 100 development staff working on the AMCS Platform with many decades of experience in the sector.

Investing in a three-release per year development cycle ensures that our clients are primed for innovation and digital transformation.

This deep sector experience is complimented to a global resourcing commitment to support smooth deployment and ongoing support of our solutions to ensure the success of our customers.

AMCS understands that your scrap metal business is complex, but we also know how to make it simple for you to maximize margin.

Download the brochure below to learn more.