IBM, Armonk, NY, United States: Enabling sustainable reuse and better service

Written answers to the questions

Total 194 words used.

Devices@IBM is a global organization of +200 members that supplies devices to over 250,000 IBM employees and contractors in 94 countries where IBM is present. The team is designed to provide computers for new hires, and technology refreshes/upgrades, or emergency replacements to existing employees.

With the many challenges and shortages that the pandemic brought, the Devices@IBM team kept relentlessly receiving requests for new hires and emergency replacements for laptops that just couldn’t wait for the supply chain to catch up. The stocks were getting lower and lower while the supplier’s delivery dates kept getting postponed.

Enter the Repair and Refurbishment Program with an out of the box approach and management system that was globally aligned with the key objective of reusing computers and components to maintain stock levels to supply IBMers with a functional device and meeting their quality expectations. We kept our customers happy and our stakeholders even more with a $14.4M of Capital Expenditure avoidance. The "green" cherry on top of all these efforts is the 4,893 tons of carbon emission prevented by these combined efforts, equivalent to one New York city Central Park sized forest worth of trees.

Total 207 words used.

With the Devices@IBM not allowing themselves to use the “Supply Chain delays” excuse, a Global repairs guild was created consistent of 38 representatives, leveraging a +60% backlog reduction of devices pending review within weeks, repairing over 18K devices and reducing the average cycle time from 70 to 21 days.

This global standardization quickly grew to support over 85 countries leading to less than 1% of our disposed assets not being recycled or reused by our team or external companies. Newly created data insights and visualizations for better decision making led to an improved resource utilization, maximizing warranty coverage and a global new Accidental Damage Protection (ADP) process - adoption where the team persuasively negotiated with the suppliers to increase their service coverage and cover the repair cost for accidental damages with wider availability for all users.

The Devices@IBM team took the challenges of the “post” pandemic world to reinvent itself in a greener fashion, while maintaining the expected quality standards and customer experience that our users have become accustomed to. Reducing waste, costs and cycle time while making the most out of our available resources, both financial and material, has opened a new path and strategy focusing on circular economy as a business model for the organization.

Total 130 words used.

The Devices@IBM Repair and Refurbishment Program has proven that a well-designed and executed strategy can overcome any challenge. The team’s drive and will to succeed reinvented the organization with what would otherwise be sold as “scraps”. Today, every single device recovered is given at least a second life as an emergency replacement, offered to our employees for personal use or sold to external companies, helping IBM walk the talk in terms of compliance to the environment and the cost reduction strategy. And that’s one great motivation for everyone in our organization.

Meanwhile, Devices@IBM is moving into a greener strategy that has allowed us to harvest several perks along way, helping us heavily reduce our impact while maintaining our business continuity and exceptional user experience that Devices@IBM is well known for.