CHICAGO — Artificial intelligence.
Five or six years ago, AI that could almost think and create was something only encountered in science fiction.
How quickly technology advances. In the past few years, generative AI options have multiplied in almost every area of daily life and in business operations. That includes industrial and institutional laundries.
What started with generating content for business-related tasks (think communication, reports, documents) has moved onto the wash aisle. Insiders have even posited that some laundries could be operated by AI without any, or at least very limited, human involvement.
It begs the question, “Where is AI heading in the laundry industry?”
American Laundry News sought input from three industry veterans who are familiar with AI, what it’s doing for the industry today, and what it might provide in the future.
David Bernstein is the founder of Propeller Solutions Group in Livingston, Texas. Rodrigo Patron is director of operations for Lace House Linen in Petaluma, California. David Griggs — one of this magazine’s columnists at large — is director of operations development with Superior Linen Service in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The term “dark” laundry has already been used, meaning it can run without human intervention. Do you see industrial/institutional laundries going this direction? Why or why not?
BERNSTEIN: No, and I would be skeptical of anyone who says otherwise within any planning horizon that is relevant to operators making decisions today.
Laundry is a physically complex, exception-driven operation. Textiles tangle. Equipment jams. Things fail in ways that do not fit neatly into a predictive model. Customers make urgent requests that, even with AI management, may still require human judgment to resolve. Quality failures require someone to decide what gets rewashed versus what gets pulled from service.
Even the most automated manufacturing sectors, like automotive assembly and semiconductor fabrication, have been working toward lights-out operations for years, and those days still have not fully arrived. Laundry has considerably more variability in its inputs than either of those industries. In the old days, we used to say, “That may work in your industry, but it won’t work in a laundry,” and in many ways this is still true today.
What will happen, and is already beginning to happen, is an increase in the number of pounds produced per operator hour. The workers who will remain will be doing different work, like monitoring systems, managing exceptions, maintaining increasingly sophisticated equipment, and interfacing with customers. The workforce will shrink, but we will need workers with more skills, knowledge, and talent. This is a challenge that will face the entire industry, and we should be planning for it now.
PATRON: I do not see industrial laundries becoming completely “dark” operations with no employees in the foreseeable future. Even with advanced automation, laundries will still need people to sort linen, supervise operations, solve problems, maintain machinery, and ensure quality standards are being met.
At Lace House, we strongly believe the human element remains extremely important. AI and automation may reduce repetitive tasks and improve efficiency, but they are tools designed to support employees — not completely replace them.
GRIGGS: I believe technology is getting to the point where we could see production facilities with no production employees.
Most laundry operators know how many turns we get out of each product. An AI-run facility can automatically inject linen at the appropriate time. The system will know when it needs to rag-out linen based off its quality inspection and so it would automatically inject a piece of linen when it removes a piece. It could even charge the customer for abuse if that is how the contract is written.
The packaging would look a little different than we see at this time, but I think we have proven that customers will adjust to different package sizes or folds.
Please share any final thoughts about AI in laundry operations.
PATRON: My overall view is that AI will continue becoming a more important tool in the laundry industry, but the key will be learning how to use it effectively.
At Lace House, we already use AI in practical ways to simplify communication and administrative processes, and we can clearly see its potential.
At the same time, laundries remain very hands-on operations that rely heavily on experienced staff. I believe the future will belong to laundries that successfully combine technology with strong operational knowledge and good employees. AI is not a replacement for people — it is a tool that can help good teams become even more efficient and effective.
I have attended a couple of TRSA events where speakers talked about robotic sorting arms that are already starting to be used in some laundries. Right now, the cost and space requirements of those systems are still a challenge for many operations, but the technology is moving incredibly fast. A lot of people in the industry believe that within the next five to 10 years, AI-powered robotic arms will become much more common and realistic in industrial laundries. I guess we will have to see it to believe it, but it is pretty amazing to see how quickly the technology is advancing.
BERNSTEIN: Something that tends to get lost in conversations about AI, especially in business, is AI’s democratizing power. Today’s tools are capable, accessible and powerful enough that you shouldn’t be waiting for someone else to build what you need.
In my own business, I have used Claude Code and GitHub Copilot to build tools I need for my work, including an iOS application for auditing plant operations and processes, another app for evaluating machinery and equipment, improvements to analytical tools and frameworks I have used for years, and Python scripts to handle everyday repetitive tasks
Nobody offered what I needed, so I built it myself using the AI’s capabilities, my experience, and careful prompting. The result is custom software that saves time, ensures consistency, and improves the speed and accuracy of every client engagement. That kind of purpose-built capability was simply not available to a small firm in the past unless they were willing to make a massive investment of time and money hiring a development firm to create custom-built software.
I have spoken with laundry owner-operators who have done the same thing in their own businesses, and the tools they have built are saving them time, freeing them from repetitive work, and allowing them to spend time on more important business matters or, in some cases, simply giving them more free time to spend with family. That is not a trivial outcome in an industry where owners and managers are stretched so thin.
That same opportunity exists for every person reading this. Even if you aren’t interested in building an app, custom software tools, databases, or websites, AI is already embedded in the tools most people already use. As an example, you can use Microsoft’s own Copilot inside Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, but you can also add in Claude, ChatGPT, and other chatbots.
Those AI tools can make a huge difference every single day by compressing work that used to take hours into something that takes just minutes or seconds. Every operation has its own collection of small projects, recurring needs, and repetitive tasks that nobody ever gets around to solving properly. These are exactly the problems AI is built for.
Stop thinking of AI as something to be feared, dismissed, or resisted, and start thinking of it as a talented intern you hired to help alleviate pressure on your full-time staff. Sometimes an intern takes care of mundane, repetitive or tedious tasks. Other times, the intern brings new capabilities and thinking that no one on the existing team has. That combination of expanded productivity and new capabilities, at very low cost, is something every operator in this industry should be taking advantage of today. No résumés or interviews necessary.
Don’t want to take my word for it? Go try this simple experiment, the same one I recently demonstrated to a class at the Association for Linen Management’s Laundry & Linen College: upload your equipment manuals to the generative AI of your choice and ask it to create preventive maintenance schedules. You’ll be shocked and amazed at the results your “new intern” will provide.
GRIGGS: Virtually every step that I have described is being done in some form or fashion in a laundry today. I haven’t seen one that has put them all together yet, but I think it’s coming. The only restriction will be the capital investment.
Click HERE to read part 1 about the current uses of AI in laundries. Read part 2 HERE about more benefits of AI use in laundries and challenges to overcome. Part 3, about AI enhancements coming for industrial/institutional laundries, can be read HERE.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
