As institutional and commercial facilites struggle under the weight of a sagging economy, managers understandably look to new products and technology to help their organizations lower their costs. But how about a no-cost source of savings? It seems to good to be true, but it is.
Maintenance and engineering departments rely on a reliable supply of spare parts and equipment to keep facilities running smoothly. But in many facilities, these inventories are managed inefficiently, resulting in unneeded costs related to out-of-stock situations, valuable space taken up by obsolote parts, and productivity problems caused by technicians having to search too long for needed parts.
Speaking at the National Facilities Management and Technology Conference, Frank Murphy, president of Inventory Management Services, encouraged attendees to look first at their practices related to storing and tracking these materials to find much-needed savings. Two examples from Murphy's presentation:
* Managers can gather and get rid of the numerous pieces of e-waste taking up valuable space in many store rooms and warehouses. Recyclers will pay for discarded printers, CPUs, monitors and the like, so managers can free up space for inventory, generate income for the organization, and properly handle potential hazardous waste -- all with one move.
* Reorganizing and consolidating inventories of maintenance parts and equipment can produce several bottom-line benefits. The department will have fewer parts to store and track. The overall value of the inventory will decrease. And technicians will be more productive because they will spend less time searching for parts.
So as managers continue their search for savings, a closer look at their inventory management practices can generate bottom-line benefits with little or no cost involved. In this economy, it doesn't get much better than that.
I would agree with you and what Frank had to say. Much of what he talked about and what he found in his line of work has been true no matter where I worked.
My last place of employment, it was not the hardware and parts that was a problem - but the chemicals. That was a main area of focus for me when I got a call from the company that we bought grease from. I did an inventory and found 9 cases of grease. In the 9 months I was there, we had only used 5 of the cases. The normal procedures was to order 10 cases each year in January. At over $100 per case, we were looking at $1000 in savings after I first started.
This was a consistent issue throughout the departments. One caution to others - do a regular inventory of what you have in chemicals. Dispose of the old, out of date chemicals and make sure that the chemicals you do have have up to date MSDS sheets. For us, we had to contact a hazardous waste disposal company to remove the old items.