Do more with less.

PUR-O-ZONE — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:10:52 +0000

If you say it fast enough, it sounds easy. But doing more with less is exactly what most facility management centers have been dealing with inside their companies and organizations for nearly a decade. The answer is not to take another whack at the old supplies budget. Because most organizations of any size spend only one dollar out of 20 on supplies, and less than that on automation, you can cut your current supplies costs in half and only save 2.5 percent overall.

And we both know that savings is false, because to halve your supplies budget you had to go with supplies, chemistry and automation that nobody can produce good results with. So while treating your supplies budget cautiously is always in order, taking too many whacks at it with a red pencil is counter productive.

The answer is to work on that 95% of your budget spent on people resources, and that is exactly what we work with our customers to do. Then we can talk about real impacts both in terms of expenditures and improvements in quality at the same time. So your supplies and automation costs per item might even increase, but if overall productivity results from a combination of the right materials and equipment and better productivity with the people side of the budget, you can come out way ahead. Do more with less.

This process is not something that happens overnight. However, as was the case at the Hutchinson Public Schools, within a year some sizeable changes can take place. Check out our case studies regarding the transformation to the Hutchinson system that Alignment Process and tremendous local leadership within the facility department have helped to evolve.

CENTRAL KANSAS Mark McFarland

Do more with less.