ROANOKE, Va. — As much as most of us hate change, especially when it is forced upon us, we must learn at times to embrace it.
I have been associated with the healthcare industry in the United States for more than 46 years and have seen many changes roll through the industry, and healthcare laundries specifically. The industry hated some of these changes and complained about them all the time. In the end, we had to adapt the way we did business and embrace the new changes.
I can remember shortly after I started in the healthcare laundry business learning how to process 100% polyester sheets, which were owned by a customer of our laundry. They required different handling through the washer and different conditioning through the dryers if they were to iron properly.
Our initial reaction to the product was to wonder why anyone would use such a product when 100% cotton sheets were still the predominate sheet in the industry.
We learned how to properly process the sheets but found that a poly/cotton blended sheet was a much easier product to handle and used some of those painful lessons learned in handling those 100% polyester sheets on the blends. We embraced the blended sheets because we liked the longer life and the decrease in weight per sheet.
The struggles with the 100% polyester sheets prepared us to handle the new trend of blended sheets.
To save energy and increase production, the laundry equipment manufacturers began to produce thermal fluid ironers. I would listen to the sales pitches at the Clean Shows and read about them in the various trade journals.
I was still unprepared to use them properly when I was hired to run a Milwaukee laundry that had three of these ironers. Some key information was left out of the literature. These ironers could run at a temperature higher than the steam ironers I was used to, but there was a limit to how hot you could run them without damaging your ironer pads and causing problems with your linen.
To increase production through the laundry, the production supervisor had turned the heat up to 435 F going into the ironer. The net result of this change was to burn the pads and cause unlimited shrinkage on the linen items being ironed.
The textile mills heat-set the polyester fibers for stability at 375 F. Exposing them to temperatures above this level destabilized the polyester fibers and caused the poly/cotton sheet to shrink as much as the cotton fibers would allow. Shrinkage of 10% after a couple of processings was not unusual.
It took me almost a year of diligent efforts and research to determine the nature of the problem and solve it by turning down the heat to 370 F. I was embracing the change but found I needed additional knowledge to make it work properly.
The lessons I learned in facing change are simply:
- Fighting it will seldom prevent it from happening.
- Changes forced on us are harder to deal with than those we embrace.
- Even when we are open to change, it may take time to develop the additional knowledge needed to make it work properly.
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