Sustainability > Innovating Sustainably Through Macroeconomic Challenges
Innovating Sustainably Through Macroeconomic Challenges
The global semiconductor chip shortage arose in Hologic’s fiscal first quarter of 2022.
With no known timeline for when the shortage would end, the company's Breast & Skeletal Health Solutions business undertook tremendous mitigation efforts to help remedy supply gaps that could jeopardize our ability to deliver critical breast cancer screening and biopsy devices to clinicians and patients. No stone was left unturned, and one of the most novel mitigation methods was the creation of a printed circuit board refurbishment program.
Project Reclaim
Project Reclaim, as the refurbishment program came to be known, involved having Hologic’s field service engineers return units from the field exchanged during routine service. Historically, these units would have been discarded and fed into electronic waste streams. Instead, electronic waste has been diverted back to Hologic’s manufacturing facilities in Danbury, Connecticut, and Newark, Delaware. These critical components have been refurbished and rigorously tested to ensure they meet Hologic’s exacting quality standards and returned to the company’s field service engineers for use in the maintenance and repair of Hologic’s 3Dimensions® mammography systems. In addition to the positive impact on Hologic’s sustainability efforts, Project Reclaim has also delivered more than $1.5 million in savings since its inception, with an annual exit rate savings of more than $3 million.