Analyse und Strukturierung von Geschäftsprozessen in der deutschen Entsorgungsbranche unter besonderer Berücksichtigung digitaler Technologien

The waste management industry is bound by a large number of national and international legislations that must be taken into account when delivering waste management services. In addition, there are different requirements from private and commercial customers as well as from municipalities with which the companies are in permanent exchange - concerning the scope of process optimization as well as in the area of technologies and digitalization. Thus, a continuous further development of the business processes in combination with the associated technology is necessary in order to be able to exist on the complex market of waste management in the long term and to be able to serve the constantly increasing requirements under the aspect of economic efficiency and sustainability. Due to the waste management industry, a further difficulty is that, in addition to the economic aspect, the social aspect and the ecological aspect must also be permanently considered.

Within the scope of the dissertation, qualitative research methods were used to scientifically investigate how digital technologies can be implemented and used at waste management companies, taking into account method triangulation. The findings of the individual methods were then combined and validated.

The survey methodology was, on the one hand, a case study in a waste management company in order to obtain an overview of the current processes in waste management companies, to query the digitization status and then to develop a case-specific strategy with further digitization steps for the company. In a second step, semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with leading employees from various waste disposal companies in Germany according to a defined interview design. In this way, the processes of the value chain, the opportunities and risks as well as the success factors of digitization could finally be worked out and confirmed. In addition, as a result, implementation strategies of digitization in waste management companies can still be pointed out.

Based on the empirical findings, a key figure-based evaluation model for measuring the success of digital solutions in waste management companies was also developed.

The work can now be used for adaptation in waste management practice or be the basis for further research in the waste management industry.