By applying Lean Six Sigma practices, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools' Graphic Production Center was able to reduce its paper waste by 90 percent

By Chris Bauer

"We needed to get buy-in from the employees without them thinking that we were micro-managing them and watching every sheet of paper they were printing or were throwing away," Griffin admits. "One of the first sessions we had with all of the employees, we told them we were not going to play the blame game. We needed to get past who was putting things into the recycling bins: we just want to know why it was going in there. Then maybe there is an opportunity for us to improve what it is that we are doing."