CASE STUDY No. 9628

KEY WORDS OFFICE FURNITURE, LOGISTICAL SHIPPING

Herman Miller, Inc.
MS 0120
855 E. Main Avenue
P.O. Box 302
Zeeland, MI 49464-0302

Contact: Caroline Maalouf, Senior Project Engineer. Tel: 616-654-5288.

Summary

By identifying the 10 parts of an office chair that are used in the greatest number during assembly, and by requiring that those parts be shipped in returnable packaging, the company saves at least $70,000 a year, among other benefits.

Action

Returnable packaging is not a new idea at Herman Miller. Both Herman Miller North America and its subsidiaries can provide a number of well documented examples of how the company and the natural environment each benefit from reusable, returnable packaging rather than expendable, throwaway packaging. But the Aeron chair takes this concept a big step further.

Introduced in 1994, the Aeron chair was designed from its inception with waste prevention in mind. The design team identified the 10 parts used in building the chair that occur in the highest volume. Suppliers were notified that those parts were to be delivered in returnable packaging. Those top 10 parts were targetted because they:

  1. Consume 90-95% of warehouse storage space for the Aeron chair.
  2. Account for 90% of the cost of materials for the chair.
  3. Tend to be the parts for which piece-price packaging costs are the highest.  In other words, since there is a packaging cost associated with each part, by requesting minimal and reusable packaging of parts used in the greatest volume, Herman Miller maximizes its opportunity to reduce costs for this chair. The few cents credit for each part delivered in reused packaging quickly becomes a significant number when multiplied by the total number of parts ordered over the course of a year.

The Aeron chair comes complete with an environmental impact statement modelled after work done by the American Society of Testing and Materials. The design of the chair has become a model for subsequent products. "Incorporating returnable packaging into the design and development process from the start has become the way we do business now," says Rick Zuverink, senior new development project leader.

Payback

For the Aeron chair, the return on the company's investment in returnable totes, boxes, and other packaging is expected to be recovered in less than a year. Thereafter, annual savings of $70,000 in parts costs are anticipated. And as sales of the Aeron chair continue to grow, so will the savings.

The savings noted above do not take into account additional benefits, including:

  1. Reduced or avoided disposal expense.
  2. The clearing of floor space once occupied by waste bins.
  3. Reduced time lost to breaking down and disposing of packaging.
  4. Reduced risk of workplace injuries related to the bending, twisting, and reaching associated with traditional packaging.
 

 

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