If you run a wastewater treatment facility, you will already be aware of the many challenges involved in operating such an organization. One such problem which almost all wastewater treatment facilities struggle with is efficiency.
The reason for this is hardly difficult to grasp. You have to manage a huge and complex facility with a thousand moving parts, so identifying and solving a singular inefficiency is incredibly difficult. There are myriad different factors at play – including the quality of your workforce, the training they have been given, the quality of your equipment, how much waste there is to process, the overall size of your facility, and so on.
However, while it is difficult to pinpoint issues, it is vital that you do. Without the proper identification of an efficiency problem, it can quickly spread and end up destroying the productivity of your facility. It doesn’t need us to tell you how damaging this could be to your organization because it could risk your eventual closure.
The best way to identify and tackle an inefficiency problem within your wastewater organization is to be rational and dissect the issue scientifically rather than emotionally.
Here are a few approaches to consider when tackling this problem yourself:
Upgrade your equipment
A great place to start when you are trying to identify an inefficiency problem and solve it is with your equipment.
Even hardworking and properly trained employees cannot work miracles with productivity when they are being lumbered with out-of-date and inefficient equipment.
Therefore, before you start pointing fingers and blaming your staff, make sure they have everything they could possibly need to succeed first.
This includes key items like a rotary lobe blower to ensure the facility is running at its full potential.
Record your current performance level
Of course, you cannot make any rational decisions without first having all the facts in front of you.
This is difficult but not impossible when it comes to inefficiency within your facility. While it is hard to pinpoint the exact cause sometimes, it shouldn’t stop you from trying.
The best way to do this is to keep a record of your performance levels week on week, month on month. This will help you put a finger on when the problem started – which might give you some indication of what the issue is.
What’s more, clear-cut evidence will help you to justify your eventual solution – which might come under scrutiny from your bosses, fellow management team members, or even your ground floor staff.
Identify systemic bottlenecks
Often, efficiency issues within a waste treatment facility stem from bottlenecks within sub-systems, which are preventing the rest of the system from functioning as it should.
You might have a perfectly good system within your facility, but if one element is out of whack, then the whole organization could suffer.
Therefore, analyze your performance metrics within each system to see when the output starts to drop. This will make it relatively easy to find the source of the problem.
