Xerox shows off savings

News source: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

Event celebrates its money-conserving projects
David Tyler Staff writer



JAMIE GERMANO staff photographerLaura Marks, right, part of the IntelliCentre Diagnostics Team at Xerox Corp., explains some of the functions of her department to fellow employees Botao Kocz and Wendy Pan on Thursday at the 2005 Celebration of Teamwork.
Day in Photos

(September 9, 2005) — Xerox Corp. held a science fair of savings at its Webster campus Thursday.

During the company's 2005 Celebration of Teamwork event, Rochester's third-largest employer showed off more than 50 projects that helped Xerox save money over the past year. The event, attended by hundreds of employees, ranged across disciplines from manufacturing to services to engineering.

The company has held the event since about 1980. In recent years, as Xerox fought to return to profitability, the focus has been on cost-saving projects, particularly those conceived under the program known as Lean Six Sigma, a method of improving business processes embraced by Xerox Chairman and Chief Executive Anne M. Mulcahy. Mulcahy met with many of the exhibitors during closed sessions Thursday morning.

"The focus really is on how does any given product flow through to the bottom line," said Tony Audi, chairman of the committee that arranged Thursday's event.

For example, a Xerox team studied a problem the company was having with the fuser — the device that melts toner onto paper — on its high-end iGen3 digital press.

Because of air that infiltrated a coating on the fuser, about 40 percent of the devices were failing, said Edmund Napp, who worked on the team that addressed the problem.

Napp and his colleagues observed the manufacturing process and decided to adjust the way the coating was being applied. Along with other improvements, the team cut the failure rate to about 4 percent.

"And we think we can get that under 1 percent," said Napp.

The changes should save Xerox about $1 million in 2006, said Napp. Those savings start to add up for a company that earned $859 million in 2004.

Other savings end up benefiting customers. The Xerox Global Services unit recently worked with the Monroe County Sheriff's Office to streamline the way it handles accident reports and other paperwork.

Xerox designed a computerized solution that lets deputies enter information electronically. Office workers at the department and insurance companies also can also access the information via the Web, said Laura J. Moran, who worked on the project.

The digital solution ended up cutting the sheriff department's costs from $28 per report to $8, an approximate annual savings of $250,000, Moran said. It also cut the time that deputies spent filling out reports and insurance companies took to access them.

"It freed up people across the department," Moran said.

The hope is that the hundreds of employees who came to the event will think of ways to apply similar thinking to their own work, Audi said.

Xerox will hold similar events at other corporate sites around the world, spokesman Bill McKee said.