At 18 pages per minute, a single session would take up to three hours on an overworked laser-jet printer. Two staff members worked overtime to pack letters into interdepartmental mailbags for distribution to kids to take home to parents. The foodservice department solved the problem by renting its own network copier. Office staff now has plenty of time to prepare the mailbags before quitting time. But information zooms from the main office to the 68 networked schools.
Managers receive a daily download of new students processed for benefits the previous day.
Instead, one letter per family will be mailed directly to parents, reducing overall printing and distribution by about two-thirds. A bit of low-tech creativity helped shave application turnaround time as well. Every meal benefit application must be date-stamped upon arrival in the foodservice office, as a reference point for parents and auditors. Once the daily batch of 1,000-plus applications arrived, it would take two staffers nearly two hours to stamp each sheet. Now one person and the high-speed copy machine can complete the task in 20 minutes.