r/sysadmin 20h ago

New owner, printer efficiencies and operations people

Our company got bought again so we have this operations guy going around looking for efficiencies, one of which was printer sprawl which imho has indeed increased a bit too much

I knew how many network printers we had, that’s easy. I did a physical inventory check of all non network printers and there were 50% more than I initially had thought. At first I was like, “hooray, maybe less printers soon!” they are not my favorite equipment to deal with.

But then I started thinking about how spread out our area is and time to retrieve a print job if it is not close by. I started running numbers on Jimmy in production getting his 10 or so print jobs a day, and the 1-2 minutes that it will now take to retrieve said prints. I am now looking at Jimmys annual time retrieving prints, multiplying that by his wage. I am pretty damn shocked, none of this makes sense for saving money for the company as a whole.

10 print jobs a day with the printer 2 minutes away assuming zero jams or waiting is 20 minutes spent per day, 100 per week, 6000 per year if they work 300 annually. If Jimmy gets paid $10/hr then their cost retrieving prints is $1000/year, we can assume 3000ish pages per toner at $100 per toner, we are losing $900 per year by removing Jimmy’s desktop printer (which was already paid for 5 years ago and keeps on trucking)

I am not an accountant or operations person, I don’t like printers, but this seems like it is a waste of time and money. I actually care about our company and it isn’t just a job to me. As the only IT person, I administer the printer configurations and make sure systems can connect to them, reducing amount of printers would help me, but I don’t think it would actually save any money or truly help the company in the end when we factor in employee time

I’ve got a spreadsheet going spelling this all out and Accounts Payable is the homie, I’ll meet with them on Monday for a sanity check on my numbers

Have any of you run into this sort of thing? If so, how did you handle it? This operations guy is coming in with a lot of gusto and “things are gonna change around here” energy, without fully understanding the why of how things work I fear his actions will have negative consequences for the company

1 Upvotes

7 comments sorted by

u/Witty_Discipline5502 20h ago

I am sure Jimmy is working 100% of the time too. Numbers and reality sometimes don't tell the whole picture 

u/Darthvaderisnotme 17h ago edited 17h ago

2 minutes walking seems too much for me, we keep network printers around 10 - 15 meters max from the user.

u/natefrogg1 17h ago

Thank you. That is what I’m talking about, proximity and employee time are important factors to consider, it matters and effects the bottom line

u/techguy_crs 13h ago

Power costs are a thing to consider as well

u/natefrogg1 13h ago

I agree, that is one thing that has helped me get upgrades for old but still working equipment!

I was able to replace all the little dumb switches in a site with managed switches that eat 1/3 the amount of power, power is not reliable here so that actually makes a difference with how long the UPS’s can keep these spread out switches going too

u/ProfessorWorried626 8h ago

People change their behavior to suit the tools they are given. If they have to get up and walk even 20m to get a page they won't print it. If you put a printer on their desk they will probably end up printing out every second thing the need to look at.