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What seemed like a small annoyance actually turned out to be a hidden tax on productivity, not to mention the second biggest company-wide problem flagged in KLM staff surveys. And it was just sitting there, in plain sight. But by modernizing their print workflow, KLM unlocked substantial savings, sustainability benefits, and smoother shop-floor operations all around. And it didn’ t involve scrapping their existing MRO infrastructure, either.
Here’ s how they did it.
Spotting hidden print problems
Often, the biggest impediments to efficiency are invisible in daily operations. That’ s because they’ re generally both small and innocuous- an annoying combination. To uncover them at KLM, we began with a simple print audit:
1. Tracking engineer movements: First, we mapped the routes that engineers took to collect printed documentation and identified worst-case walks of 273 yards each way
2. Measuring reprint rates and job-card errors: Next we reviewed how often printed job cards went unclaimed, were reprinted, or ended up in the wrong location, forcing engineers or managers to take corrective action
3. Helpdesk burden assessment: KLM’ s IT team then started logging support requests tied to printing issues such as driver troubles, misrouted files, or incorrect destinations
4. Volume analysis: We quantified how much paper was used per inspection or non-routine job, discovering that a single aircraft check generated anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 sheets of paper
Multiplied across 100 engineers across the company and thousands of checks a year, this audit revealed the true cost of what we call a‘ walk-to-print’ problem. Not just the walking time, which is obvious, but also the lost productivity, the reprinting, and the general
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