Textile/Uniform Rental: W. Kirby Wagg, Performance Matters, Sarasota, Fla.
As someone who’s been in the textile rental laundry industry for over 45 years, working at my company (Wagg’s Uniform in North Toronto) I’ve seen the wash aisle’s efficiency and quality fluctuate for various reasons.
If you’ve noticed a recent dip in these areas, it’s time to take a closer look at several critical factors: water softness, water temperature, mechanical action, wash times, chemicals and equipment functions.
WATER SOFTNESS
Water quality is the foundation of any successful wash process. Hard water, which contains high levels of minerals like calcium and magnesium, can hinder the effectiveness of detergents and lead to fabric degradation over time.
You must have “zero” hardness water for chemicals to work properly.
WATER TEMPERATURE: THE BALANCING ACT
Water temperature plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of the washing process. Regularly check your water heaters and temperature settings to ensure that the correct temperatures are maintained for different wash cycles.
However, be mindful of energy costs and the potential for textile damage at excessively high temperatures.
MECHANICAL ACTION: THE UNSUNG HERO
Mechanical action is the physical movement of textiles during the wash cycle, and it’s vital for loosening and removing soil from fabrics. Your chemical rep is your friend throughout this whole process.
Regular maintenance of your washing machines, including drum alignment and bearing checks, can prevent mechanical issues that might impact this aspect of the wash process.
WASH TIMES
The length of the wash cycle directly affects both the quality of the cleaning and the lifespan of the textiles. Too short a cycle may leave linens inadequately cleaned, while too long a cycle can cause unnecessary wear and tear.
Review your wash programs to ensure that each cycle time is optimized for the type of load being processed.
CHEMICALS: THE RIGHT BALANCE
The chemicals used in the wash process are as important as any other factor. Detergents, alkalis, bleaches and sour must be carefully selected and dosed to match the water quality, fabric type and soil level.
Overuse of chemicals can lead to fabric damage and increased costs, while underuse can result in poor cleaning performance. Regularly review your chemical usage with your supplier to ensure that you’re using the most effective products at the right concentrations.
EQUIPMENT FUNCTIONS
Lastly, the functionality of your equipment is fundamental to maintaining quality and efficiency.
Regular preventive maintenance is crucial to avoid unexpected downtime and ensure that your machines are operating at peak performance. This includes checking for wear and tear on belts, ensuring that seals are intact, and calibrating any sensors or controls.
Investing in new technology, such as automated dosing systems or energy-efficient machines, can also lead to significant improvements in both quality and cost savings over time.
CONCLUSION
By focusing on these key areas—water softness, temperature, mechanical action, wash times, chemicals and equipment—you can address the root causes of any decline in your wash aisle’s quality and efficiency.
Regularly reviewing and optimizing these factors will not only improve the cleanliness and longevity of your textiles but also enhance the overall efficiency of your operations, contributing to a healthier bottom line.
Healthcare Laundry: Jay Juffre, ImageFIRST, King of Prussia, Pa.
What a great question. We should always be looking for ways to deliver the highest quality to customers and much of that dynamic starts and ends in the washing process.
When it comes to consistently delivering the very best product to customers, there are key items in the wash process that need to be equally consistent.
To do this effectively and to quickly address concerns when quality starts to drop, it is important to break things down into a handful of key buckets: wash chemistry, load weights, equipment maintenance and, finally, product selection.
Let’s talk about wash chemistry. This is where you should start. Your chemical vendor should be a great resource for you. Let them know that you have concerns about your quality and would like their objective opinion on why this is happening.
This is more than them just throwing more soap at the problem. Make sure they dig in. Their analysis should look at everything, from water quality and temperature to incoming soil and wash cycle titration levels.
Obviously, they should also be able to tell if you are optimizing the wash chemistry to achieve the result you and your customers expect.
They also should give you good insights on where to look in the other three buckets, which brings us to the second element, load weights. All too often when folks are dealing with quality concerns in their facility, it is because they are unknowingly underloading or overloading their machines.
For example, if the wash formula is set for 900 pounds of product X and your team loads it with 1,000 pounds, you will never obtain the quality that the formula was designed to achieve.
One big key to consistent quality is to ensure that product X will always have the same weight, the same chemistry and the same mechanical action every time. Ensure your team knows the importance of weighing everything and that wash loads for certain products are always the same.
The third item is all about how the equipment is performing. To get quality where it needs to be, the machines need to be able to do what they were designed to do.
All too often when you dig in, you find that either the washer, dryer or a piece of supporting equipment (for example, the water softener, boiler, etc.) is not working as expected.
Typically, this is not an end of useful life situation, but rather, it is a lack of proper maintenance or simply needs some additional attention.
The final piece of the puzzle is what type of product you are injecting into the process. Some towels, for example, look as good on the 100th wash as they do on the first. Others look dingy and pill after only a handful of washing.
Buy product that will meet your and your customers’ quality standards long after they are injected.
There are other things we can dig into to improve the quality coming out of the wash aisle but focus on these four areas and with a few tweaks, you should see better results soon.
Miss Part 1 with suggestions from experts in commercial laundry, uniforms/workwear manufacturing? Click HERE to read it.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
