CHICAGO — More than three-quarters of managers responding to March’s Wire survey (76.5%) say their laundry has established production standards that each employee must meet but only 58.8% say they regularly make production data available to employees so they can compare their work to the standard.
Information related to several operational aspects is gathered regularly and analyzed by virtually every respondent, according to results of our unscientific survey.
Linen usage by customer or department is monitored by nearly 90%, followed closely by the weight of goods entering or exiting their facility and chemicals usage (each selected by 82.4%). Other high-priority data-collection areas include washer/dryer production, 76.5%; flatwork production, 70.6%; water usage, 64.7%; and electricity usage, 58.8%.
Areas that don’t garner as much attention from this set of respondents are garment-finishing production, 41.2%; timing of deliveries, 35.3%; sewage output, 29.4%; and “Other,” 17.6% (hand-folding and small-piece finishing; costs per adjusted patient days; and linen additions and ragouts were mentioned).
Approximately 6% of respondents say they “really don’t track production information like this.”
Finally, with daylight-saving time starting three weeks earlier than in previous years, managers were asked if they or their staff had taken any action to determine how their operation might be impacted by this change. Our survey results clearly showed that an earlier daylight-saving time was no big deal, as nearly 95% of respondents reported taking no action. Among the small minority who did, that action included installing software updates.
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Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].