Richard AgamaCleaning up is common sense, but think about how keeping your place of business tidy makes good financial sense. Cleaning up isn’t simply about making things look pretty, especially in an industrial or office milieu. Consider these four ways keeping your facility clean affects your bottom line and find ways to raise your profits while cutting your costs!
Lean and Clean Machines
Regular maintenance of your machinery doesn’t mean a monthly visit from a mechanic to ensure the inner workings are operating. If your facility churns up a lot of dust, dirt, grit, grime, and other messiness, make sure you regularly wipe down, vacuum, and clear any intruding waste materials from your machines. You should already have a ventilation system, dust collector machine, industrial sweeper, or similar apparatus in place to filter the air, clean the floors, and keep machinery pristine. That means lower maintenance costs and fewer repair bills down the road.
Healthier Employees Means Better Employees
Want to reduce your insurance premiums? Keep a clean shop. If you allow trash, dust, noxious fumes, rot, and other unpleasant things to accumulate and thrive in your workplace, you’ll end up with sick employees—and while they’re recovering, production goes down. You also run the risk of infections, the transmission of diseases, and the like. Cleanliness means fewer accidents as well since clutter can lead to injuries and even deaths. Keep your employees happy by keeping them healthy and safe.
Less Time Seeking, More Time Working
Continuing our assessment of the four ways keeping your facility clean affects your bottom line, number three is the simple fact that keeping your place in order means less time wasted, which means increased production. Employees shouldn’t have to search for the tools and space they need to get their jobs done. Keep things organized and in order and remove the trash and muck that can obscure things and interfere with workers’ abilities to complete tasks on time. Create a culture of cleanliness. Reward employees who take the time to pick up trash, reorganize, and keep things spick-and-span.
Waste Not, Want Not
What a cliché…but it’s true! Take the time to assess whether you and your workers are using up materials too rapidly—office and maintenance supplies, packing materials, and so forth. Managing resources can cut costs right away. Another way to save is to review your trash to see if you can refurbish and reuse tools, sell waste materials to scrap dealers, and so on. Sort and organize your trash to see if there’s a gold mine in your garbage!
