In 1908, Henry Ford built the first Model T which sold for $825. By 1913, he introduced the moving assembly line which provided for a significant increase in efficiency and a decrease in the cost of production. By 1916, the
cost of the Model T reduced to $360. The ability to allow costs to be low through standardisation allowed for over 15 million Model Ts to be sold over nearly 20 years.
Standardisation in an office can also provide significant cost savings and increase productivity. One of the easiest areas to provide standardisation is in your printer and multi-function system fleet. There are three key ways that standardisation can help your organisation control costs and efficiency.
If an organisation has multiple types of printers or multi-function systems in service, then it requires multiple sets of toner, fusers, rollers and other key parts. Not only does this take extra time to order and maintain, but it can provide for a greater degree of waste. If a printer is damaged beyond repair and it’s replaced by a non-like model, the supplies your organisation has on hand will be wasted.
Standardisation can allow for replaceable and interchangeable parts. If one device is out of toner and your supplier is on back order, it is not a problem for you because you can utilise the supply from another device in your office. In addition, you will not have to store as many supplies because all of your devices will use products from the same shelf.
Standardisation allows for the workplace to become an efficient machine to produce the most profitable output. To learn more about implementing these type of processes, check out some of our other articles on workflow.