CASE STUDY No. 9715
KEY WORDS OFFICE SUPPLIES, INTERNAL REUSE
AT&T Paradyne
Data Communications
P.O. Box 2826
Largo, FL 33779
Contact: Linda Montgomery, Recycling Team Leader. Tel: 813-530-2120.
Summary
The "Office Supply Depot" becomes an internal collection point and redistribution center for office supplies that are surplus in one department but needed in another. One-year reduction in office supply costs: $28,000.
Action
In October 1994, the AT&T division in Largo, Florida, opened the doors to its new Office Supply Depot (OSD), an unstaffed, self-service, mini-warehouse of common office supplies--a place where surplus items in one department can be picked up by other departments that have a need. The OSD team, an 11-member sub-team of the company's all-volunteer recycling team, takes care of collecting departmental donations and restocking the Depot's (surplus) steel shelves with such items as binders, hanging folders, file folders, Rolodex cards, tabs, staples, staplers, staple pullers, highlighters, markers, pens, pencils, etc. "Shoppers"--AT&T employees from various departments--can browse and pick up supplies at any time. All they have to done is sign the log book indicating what they took.
One OSD team member was skeptical when he first heard the idea of a supply depot. "I imagined dirty used pens, broken desk trays, pencil nubs, and dried-out highlighters," he wrote in the AT&T Paradyne newsletter. To his surprise, departments scoured their closets and found large quantities of like-new but surplus office supplies. "The many unopened boxes received in the OSD should remind us to buy only what we need," the AT&T employee said.
"There are many benefits of using the OSD," another employee wrote. "First off, it saves money in your department budget. I check the Depot about once every 2 weeks. I've found such savers as refills for the Time Management System organizers, which saved almost $60. The Depot also saves me time. I can walk in, pick up what I need, sign the log, and I'm done. I don't have to look in the supply catalog, find the items, write a request, have my manager sign it, send in the request, and wait. I also find I order fewer supplies from the catalog because I can find what I need in the OSD."
Employees whose offices are some distance from the OSD can save a trip by checking what's in inventory at "the company store" on the office data system.
Payback
During the first 10 months of OSD operation, AT&T Paradyne employees reused:
During the first year of OSD operations, the company estimated it saved a total
$28,000 in avoided purchase of office supply items.