E-mergo & CBM, circular together!

As digitalization partner of the Koninklijke CBM, E-mergo built a sustainable and scalable solution in Mendix to support the circularity of wood waste in the furniture makers' supply chain. The Koninklijke CBM is the trade association for interior construction and the furniture industry. The collaboration with E-mergo resulted in the Wood Loop app. In this blog we discuss the CBM Wood Loop initiative, the ambitions and challenges around Wood Loop, the Wood Loop app we built, and how we provide digital support for the entire chain with it.

CBM introduces: Wood Loop

"Getting more than 9,000 furniture companies and interior builders to produce only circularly after 2050, without wasting materials and raw materials." That's the mission of Dirk van Deursen, innovation manager at CBM.

The Dutch furniture sector places a significant burden on the natural raw material wood. Around 635 kilotons of wood are consumed annually. Unfortunately, 20% of this is lost during the production process, and the lion's share involves MDF and chipboard.

This loss can be reduced if the recycling of wood waste is organized on a larger scale, more easily, more purely, and more efficiently. That's why CBM started the Wood Loop initiative. Wood Loop is an innovative organization that enables every wood processor, retailer, and board material producer to recycle MDF and chipboard easily and affordably.

The challenges of Wood Loop

In the existing situation, it wasn't possible for the chain to separate wood waste cheaply and easily. First, there's the logistics: it hadn't been determined which party would handle the fine-grained collection of wood waste. In addition, the intention isn't to have extra trips take place, since this causes extra CO2 emissions, which is exactly what people want to save on. Furthermore, the packaging used (crates) mustn't get lost. So it must be possible to track the packaging throughout the entire chain and with every transaction. Furthermore, the intention was for the entire chain to get one scalable and robust solution. The data is then stored in one place, which CBM also has access to, providing up-to-date insight into results and transactions. There also needed to be a solution to physically separate the waste properly. The material can then go straight to a recycling company to be recycled. Finally, of course, it needs to be easy and unambiguous to use.

Mendix, the ideal platform for the solution

The choice was made to use Mendix to build this solution. Mendix is a low-code software platform for building web or mobile applications. With low-code, developers can build applications through visual modeling. This makes app development more manageable, more flexible, and much faster than developing it yourself with traditional coding. For more info on Mendix, you can view the product page here.

The Wood Loop app

Within 4 months, E-mergo built a robust, extensible multi-device app. We're of course very proud of that. The app connects the furniture makers and wood suppliers in the chain with each other and digitally supports the entire wood waste process. Upon login, the app recognizes which role a user has. Based on the role, the right pages and functionalities are then shown.

Separating wood waste between MDF and chipboard starts with the furniture maker. In the app, furniture makers can easily order empty crates and return full crates via a QR scan (each crate has a unique QR code). Together with delivering newly ordered materials, wood suppliers will deliver empty crates and pick up full crates. So it's a small addition to daily logistics. No extra trips, and all information for planning the logistics and trips is available from the app. In addition, every crate in the chain can be traced. Every empty or full crate is automatically tracked, and the transaction data is stored centrally.

The full crates are also weighed to determine the pure mass of the wood waste (or rather, the new raw materials to be used). This is an essential contribution to making the chain circular. Each furniture maker's personal contribution to CO2 savings is tracked. This lets every furniture maker know exactly how well they're contributing to the Wood Loop objectives. In addition, CBM has insight into the data of the entire chain.

The pilot will start soon with a selected group of furniture makers and one large wood supplier. We're very curious about the experiences that will come out of it. The intention is that after the pilot, many more (and eventually all) furniture makers will start using the app. An important step toward separating wood waste more easily and cheaply. Circular together!

This blog was written by Andy Berger
Mendix Developer at E-mergo

Want to know more?

Do you also want sustainability and circularity supported in your chain? We're happy to show you the Wood Loop app and discuss your specific needs further.