Waste Management 2008 Annual Report Download - page 36
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Please find page 36 of the 2008 Waste Management annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.have the ability to react to a changing environment and proactively take steps to reduce the impact that current
conditions may have on our operations.
In February 2009, we announced that we were taking steps to further streamline our organization by
consolidating many of our Market Areas. Our principal operations are managed through six Groups, as described
below. Each of our geographic Groups had been further divided into several Market Areas. As a result of our
restructuring, the 45 separate Market Areas that we previously operated have been consolidated into 25 Areas.
Management at this level of the organization is responsible for selling and marketing our services and coordinating
all of our operations within the market. In addition, they implement market-based strategies and plans, and provide
staff support in administration, financial control and analysis, human resources, customer service, pricing and
business strategy, safety, fleet services, and community and municipal relations. We have found that our larger
Market Areas generally were able to achieve efficiencies through economies of scale that were not present in the
smaller Market Areas. We have also realigned our Corporate organization with this new structure in order to provide
these support functions more efficiently. We currently estimate that this restructuring will eliminate over
1,000 employee positions throughout the Company and result in a restructuring charge of between $40 million
and $50 million. We expect to recognize most of this charge during the first quarter of 2009. This realignment is the
natural next step in our efforts to lower costs and further standardize processes and improve productivity, and we
currently estimate that it will provide annualized cost savings in excess of $100 million.
We intend to continue building on our strategy to meet the needs of a changing environment. As the largest
waste services provider in North America, we believe we are well positioned to meet the needs of our customers and
communities as they, too, Think Green». We believe that helping our customers achieve their environmental goals
will enable us to achieve profitable growth. We regularly help customers reduce, reuse and recycle the waste they
produce. We also focus on ways to convert waste to a usable energy source. By focusing on providing new
environmentally responsible and sustainable solutions to our customers’ waste problems, we believe we can create a
competitive advantage across all of our lines of business.
Our focus on operational excellence has provided us a strong foundation on which to build. We intend to take
advantage of strategic opportunities as they arise and continue to seek profitable growth through targeted sales
efforts and acquisitions. We also continue to seek to grow our current business in different areas that fit into our
current operations. We believe that, even in these challenging economic times, we can make investments that will
provide long-term value to our stockholders.
Operations
General
We currently manage and evaluate our principal operations through six operating Groups, of which four are
organized by geographic area and two are organized by function. The geographic Groups include our Eastern,
Midwest, Southern and Western Groups, and the two functional Groups are our Wheelabrator Group, which
provides waste-to-energy services, and our WM Recycle America (“WMRA”) Group, which provides recycling
services not managed by our geographic Groups. We also provide additional waste management services that are
not managed through our six Groups. These services include in-plant services, where we work at our clients’
facilities to provide full-service waste management solutions and provide opportunities for process improvements
and associated cost reductions in their waste management. Other services not managed within our Groups include
methane gas recovery, sub-contracted and administrative services performed by our National Accounts and
Upstream organizations, portable self-storage, fluorescent lamp recycling and healthcare solutions services,
including medical waste disposal. These services are presented in this report as “Other.”
The table below shows the total revenues (in millions) contributed annually by each of our reportable segments
in the three-year period ended December 31, 2008. More information about our results of operations by reportable
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