CHICAGO — What does it take to improve the productivity, efficiency and profitability of a laundry?
Hiring more employees?
Acquiring the latest, most advanced high-tech equipment?
A plant redesign and overhaul?
In fact, making plant improvements doesn’t have to take a lot of time, effort and money.
“Some laundries have realized a 30 to 40% increase in labor productivity through improved scheduling, reduction of congestion and production monitoring,” says Matt Alexander, president of consulting firm Pertl & Alexander LLC in Skaneateles, N.Y. “Even small improvements in utility efficiency have added up to large savings.”
Small changes are sometimes the most ignored, but when combined, a group of small changes together in the operational aspects of the laundry could impact the business in a tremendous manner.
IT PAYS TO MEASURE
Bob Corfield, president of Laundry Design Group LLC in Phoenix, Ariz., has explored the question of small changes for laundries over the years. His main recommendation? Benchmarking.
“If a plant is not benchmarking their operations for productivity, utilities and profitability/costs, then they need to bite the bullet and engage in a comprehensive program to measure all that can be measured,” Corfield says. “Once they have fully committed to a program, and have some initial data points, they should seek out viable comparisons and see where they stand.
“This is no easy task, but commitment and consistency is required, and it costs very little.”
Armed with benchmarking comparisons, Corfield says, a laundry can set out looking for small improvements in a variety of areas, in some cases with little or no investment. He names a few example areas, such as workflow scheduling, improved route scheduling, energy projects related to water and equipment tuning, and, most importantly, customer evaluation.
“Each of these are high-value, essential activities that can have a dramatic impact on your plant and business, regardless if you are OPL or commercial,” he says.
Gregory Gicewicz, president of Sterile Surgical Systems (a.k.a. Textile Services Inc.) in Tumwater, Wash., agrees with Corfield that laundries first need to get a measure of their operations.
“Laundry productivity is largely a factor of your people, your processes and your technology, the equipment,” Gicewicz says. “Before making any changes, it is best to first understand where you are in terms of efficiency and then work intelligently to improve in the correct areas.”
He says that a good first step is to establish the key productivity metrics that align best to the bottom line. While there are general, industry-used metrics and benchmarks, it is best to determine which metrics work best for a particular plant and then measure the operation against those.
Some typical focus areas and their associated metrics that Gicewicz notes include the following:
- Plant labor productivity —Pounds per operator hour
- Plant labor productivity —Dollars earned per operator hour
- Plant labor productivity —Labor dollars spent as a percentage of revenue earned
- Individual labor productivity —Pieces processed per hour
- Water efficiency — Gallons consumed per pound processed
- Natural gas efficiency — Btu consumed per pound processed
- Electrical efficiency — kWh consumed per pound processed
- Chemical efficiency —Chemical cost per hundredweight
- Linen replacement — New linen dollars spent per pound processed
To this list, Alexander adds pounds of laundry processed per square foot of plant and revenue per pound of laundry processed.
He also recommends looking at the textiles themselves as focal points for change. These include:
- The cost to maintain textile inventory based on a cost per pound of clean linen processed.
- The value of textiles that are lost in service—delivered to use areas and never returned.
- The percentage of production that is subjected to stain reclamation processing after an initial wash process.
- The percentage of laundry processed that is removed from service—ragged out.
Besides looking at the textile benchmark noted, he recommends making sure that companies are getting the new linens and textiles ordered.
“Inspect all new-linen deliveries,” says Alexander. “Check the specified weight and quality of products.”
Check back Tuesday for the conclusion on labor and equipment.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].