What was the major reason that MIT decided to close Lab Supplies?
The Lab Supplies people were doing a good job in terms of service and customer satisfacftion. However, a detailed review by the Supplier Consolidation team found that since Lab Supplies had to mark up their prices to make their operation self-supporting, they were not competitive in terms of price. Partnering with several outside companies which buy in huge quantity is expected to result in significant cost savings to the Institute. Q: The rumor mill, and even Boston-area newspapers, make it sound like there have been hundreds of layoffs because of reengineering, and that service employees represented by unions have been especially hard hit. Why is there so much confusion about the numbers? A: I think there are several reasons for the confusion. One is that our reengineering efforts have been going on at the same time that MIT has experienced cutbacks in federal funding. As a research university, MIT is dependent on the federal government to fund many of our research activities. When t
