The pressure is weighing heavy on Fortune 500 companies to adopt more sustainable practices. However, it is often difficult for these businesses to provide consumers with the same quality of service when reducing carbon footprint because many sustainable practices require large changes to industrial processes. Here’s how a Fortune 500 online retail giant was able to save over 200,000 pounds of waste through the first five months of 2024!
Scenario
The leadership team at a Fortune 500 online retailer was feeling immense pressure to adapt more sustainable practices. However, many greener changes would decrease the quality of the services they offer to the end user and change their warehousing and fulfilment process too drastically.
Using less packaging when shipping items to customers would increase the likelihood that items would be damaged upon arrival. Hiring less drivers would increase the amount of time between when a customer places their order and when they receive the order.
On the warehousing side of the business, purchasing and implementing more energy efficient equipment was also not the easiest option. Purchasing such equipment is a large investment, and taking time away from fulfilling orders to train staff on how to manage the new equipment can often be just as costly.
Objective
The online retailer’s leadership team needed to find a way to cut waste in the warehousing and fulfilment process without decreasing the quality of their end service, having to purchase new equipment for all their sites, or having to extensively train staff on new processes.
Initiative
The online retailer saw an opportunity to cut waste in their maintenance department by repairing failed conveyance components that they would have normally replaced. They brought in AH Group as a repair management partner, and the AH team took over from there.
AH Group set up collection areas in each of their sites and provided each site with a regional manager that collects failed components regularly. If the site has an urgent failure, the AH team also allows site professionals to send parts in need of repair to our West Coast or Midwest facilities. Once the parts were in AH’s hands, the team took over the repair process entirely, taking the workload of finding a repair partner for each component off the customer’s employees.
The AH Group team also equipped and trained site employees in JunoEdge, AH Group’s own best-in-class repair management software. This allows all employees from AH and the retailer to see which stage in the repair process their parts are at.
In addition to setting up and managing the repair process, the AH team also provided the online retailer’s team with in-depth data and insights on several metrics tailored to the retailer’s needs. These insights included data about sustainability, cost savings, most failed parts, and more.
Result
From January 2024 through May of 2024, the online retailer saved 211,500 pounds of material from being scrapped into landfills. This was due to the need for the online retailer to decrease their carbon footprint and the seamless integration of the repair process with AH Group.
Curious to explore how AH Group can make the most of your maintenance budgets? Reach out to us at info@ahgroupna.com and discover the untapped cost saving opportunities within your manufacturing sites.