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It is all around us but no one seems to have a handle on it!
In this article, I want to tell you about one of Tim's great friends and allies.
This ally has no gender. It is usually all around you. It has no sense of belonging or respect for your office space. Its primary goal is to make you
both look and eventually become inefficient.
It will usually let you down. When you need them, they are never there. When you do not need them, they are a bit like Glasgow buses.
They arrive in volume, usually 3 at a time and the one you need never seems to be available. So what is the evil gender less thing that we all need to be wary of?
 Now let us get the spelling correct.
It is stationery. Yes, that is the correct spelling(Remember it this way: Stationery has an "e" for envelope)
In some ways, I am also drawn to the other spelling of stationery.
Why do I say this?
In many instances, stationery is stationary, literally.
Offices all over the country have storerooms full of envelopes that no one ever uses.
Stationery costs most office-based businesses thousands of pounds per year. We have paid for them so we had better keep them.
Often there is no robust system in place to deal with the replenishment process.
So if you have this problem how do you go about tackling it?
Here are just a few suggestions to get you started!
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Separate Stationery into Two categories in your mind:
Category 1 - All items of stationery that we need as part of the product or service we deliver to our customers. (This is usually where most of the money is tied up and where the bulkiest items usually live e.g. envelopes, paper labels etc.)
Category 2 - All other stationery items e.g. pens, pencils post it notes etc.
It is the Category 1 items you need to concentrate on to have the biggest impact.
Step  |
Physically go into your business area and collect a sample of all the Category 1 items, and list them.
These items are essential to you delivering your service. The acid test is to ask yourself the question "If we ran out of this item would our process need to close down till we got some more?"
These are the "vital few" items of stationery. In some ways, it is healthy not to think of these items as "stationery" in the traditional sense. It is beneficial to think of them as essential components of your product. This thinking gives them a bit more gravitas.
Often these "essential components" are hidden or not clear amongst all of the other stationery items that are randomly taking over the office space.
For example, there may be two component type envelopes that you need on a day-to-day basis. If you actually walk through the office space, you may find many other types of envelopes in the office.
Often these other types have found a home in your office because of historical or hysterical reasons.
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Understand the volumes involved of the component type items. i.e.
how many do we use a day, week, month.
Step  |
Create a "pull" system for these component type items with clear visual control...........
I hope that you are now thinking about this from a systems viewpoint rather than just "stationery".
The purpose of this article was to get you to start thinking about stationary stationery.
We should treat it more seriously.
It is a large spend item in most office-based businesses but is not always treated as such.
The amount of waste caused by out of control stationery is something I believe we all need to think about, very seriously.
It is not just a financial drain on your business but it also has many environmental considerations.
Take time out to think about all of the waste associated without of control business supplies.
Start to make your stationery flow!
Hope this helps,
Best regards,
Graham Ross
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