CHANDLER, Ariz. — What is the future of the laundry industry going to look like?
A variety of factors will influence that future: the global economy, changes in the marketplace, workforces. But what might the future hold, and how can the industry make a difference?
This was the topic of discussion at the Association for Linen Management (ALM) annual conference here earlier this year during the session titled A Conversation Among Leaders.
Representatives from the Textile Care Allied Trades Association (TCATA), the International Association for Healthcare Textile Management (IATHM), the American Reusable Textile Association (ARTA) and ALM examined the future of the industry in five areas: the return of textile mills to the United States, government regulation, equipment leasing, automation, and what the U.S. can learn from other countries.
AUTOMATION
The discussion about maintenance and changes in technology led to a question about the future of automation in the laundry industry.
Linda Fairbanks, executive director of ALM in Richmond, Ky., recently toured a textile mill. In one area, there was a long row of machines weaving textiles—with just one man walking up and down these aisles and monitoring the machines.
“I said all the machines, one person?” she says. “He said that back in the day, for each one of these machines, they had an operator. They had a technician for each one of them. Now, with automation and the processes, they only need one to handle an entire row that once was handled by 20 people.
“As our labor force gets more expensive, as technology becomes more innovative, it can do more for you, are our laundries going to become a dark building with four to five operators running the entire plant, just monitoring the equipment?”
Rocco Romeo, CEO, Ottawa Regional Hospital Linen Services in Ontario, president of IATHM, believes the laundry industry will see increased automation as labor costs go up.
Ed McCauley, president and CEO, United Hospital Services in Indianapolis, past president of ARTA, sees the industry making strides in terms of advanced technology, with a lot more robotics now than has been seen in the past.
“It’s generating typically from Europe because of their high labor rates, but we still are feeding small pieces into folders by hand,” he says. “Let’s take a patient gown that’s three-dimensional. It’s very hard to take something like that and robotically feed the folder.”
Still, McCauley sees it happening in the industry in areas such as the bulk moving of goods. Another area where he sees automation is with sheets and simple corner feeders.
“That’s happening,” he says. “You get down into the smaller pieces and you have more of a problem.”
Doug Story, vice president of corporate support for Gurtler Industries in Germantown, Tenn., and a board member for ALM, describes how the healthcare business, in terms of the socialized countries, has eliminated the need for automation by not using small-piece folders, as well as flatwork ironers, through government standards.
“They take the stuff that comes out of the tunnel, the cake, it’s post-sort,” he says. “It goes into their post-sort operation, and then it goes into the dryers. They have a person standing at the end of the dryers, they pack it into giant bags, they tie the tops of the bags, they throw it into a cart and they ship it to the hospital. Basically, they eliminate flatwork ironers, folders. It goes back to the hospital and the hospital has to pull it out and spread it out. Kind of similar to the way folks do it at home.”
Fairbanks says that ALM members have this discussion all the time: Do you fold your fitted sheets or bag them?
“I think when we first started asking that question, 90% were fold,” she says. “Now, it’s going back the other way. The one concern that you have on the clean-linen side is the human factor. Did they wash their hands? Is their apparel clean? If that’s where our textiles are becoming contaminated, the elimination of touching textiles more and more that shows toward infection prevention and improvement. You may have multiple forces driving this.”
WHAT CAN THE U.S. LEARN FROM OTHER COUNTRIES?
The final topic of discussion was about what laundry operations in the United States can learn from countries overseas.
McCauley says there’s a lot to learn. In Europe, the technology is 20 years ahead of the United States, he says. This is because wage rates are so high, and laundries can’t get rid of an employee, can’t fire them.
“[Employees] either have to die or retire,” he says. [Laundries] are constantly upgrading their automation so when that person does leave, for whatever reason, they don’t have to replace them.”
As an example, McCauley says laundries in Europe use double-line ironers. Employees will feed the sheets in lengthwise, two at a time.
“If you tried that here in the States, the first complaint you’re going to get is from the person who makes the bed because now the sheet doesn’t open up anymore. So that is done, forget it, don’t even think about that because of objections,” he says. “There’s a lot to be learned if you ever get the opportunity to get over there.”
Story, however, points out that there are differences between textiles and linens in the United States and in Europe. That affects how those goods can be processed.
“In the U.S., we process probably three times more classifications than a counterpart would in Germany, France, Norway, Sweden,” he says. “It’s not just washing, it’s not just equipment, it’s the textiles. It’s that whole combination. The challenge when we see things in Europe that are automated a certain way, it’s because they’ve standardized. They don’t do COG [customer-owned goods]. They generally only do rental or pool linen. We would have to make other decisions to make these advances possible.”
In the end, the question is what is the laundry industry going to be like 30 years in the future?
How can the industry be involved in best crafting a mechanism to make advances work for laundry processors, for linen distribution and handling, for patient and guest services and their satisfaction? How can the industry make it better and make it work?
“It’s going to take collaborative efforts so we don’t confuse customers with mixed messages, and we have to have evidence that what we are doing is accurate and not just because we think it’s better to do it this way, we feel it’s there, or we believe,” says Fairbanks. “We ought to work from facts and make sure we understand our facts when we go forward.”
Miss Parts 1 and 2? Click here for Part 1, on U.S. textile mills, and here for Part 2, about government regulation and equipment leasing.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].