Each quarter, the company gives out an Environmental Sustainability Action Award in recognition of an employee or team who has shown leadership, exemplifying how Microsoft and its employees can have a positive impact. These leaders help us improve not only the way we run our business, but also the ways our products and services can make a difference for our customers, partners and society. With the award comes a donation to an environmental charity of the winner’s choice.
Our Fourth Quarter award for 2012 goes to Conor McDonald, Supply Chain Manager based in Dublin, Ireland, for leading the Microsoft Supply Chain Agility Forum. Conor’s work has led to substantial environmental improvements and cost reductions and is a great example of how we can look at our current processes and make dramatic improvements.
In Microsoft’s supply chain there are many different opportunities for improvement, everything from packaging, to manuals, to how you configure products on a pallet to maximize space. With Conor leading the Supply Chain Forum over the last year and a half, Microsoft has been able to develop some creative ideas and turn them into clear action plans with solid results.
Some of the successes coming from this forum include the elimination of unnecessary product and packaging materials resulting in a reduction of 511.4 tonnes with a savings of $2.8 million, re-engineering the way consoles are loaded into containers eliminating approximately 10% of the container capacity, reducing 91% of UK Xbox product manual pages saving 239.8 tonnes of paper, replacing DVD products with LIVE Cards saving 153.9 tonnes of DVD case, DVD’s, and manuals. These are all great examples of the type of cross-group work which Conor has helped drive and which examines how the company can make significant improvements to our processes, save costs and drive further advances in sustainability of our processes and products.
We hope Conor’s work will be just the beginning as we continue to explore ways to cut resource use and reduce costs and that others may be inspired to consider the opportunities to reduce the environmental impact of some of our work.
Thank you Conor, and congratulations!