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.
GOVERNMENT REGULATION
After talking about U.S. textile mills, the discussion then moved on to the impact of a proposed laundry regulation bill in New York City.
The bill, Intro. 697, called the CLEAN Act, seeks to have local large-scale laundry facilities licensed by the City’s Department of Consumer Affairs. Council Member Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx) introduced the bill in February 2015 in response to allegations of unsanitary laundry practices within the city.
Rocco Romeo, CEO, Ottawa Regional Hospital Linen Services in Ontario, president of IATHM, believes that Torres raised some good points when proposing the bill.
“There are some horror stories, and you do have to ask a lot of questions,” he says.
However, a key concern for Romeo about the bill is that the Department of Consumers Affairs of New York City, which would be administering laundry regulations, says that it has no idea where to start in setting standards and licensing all these laundries.
“But I think the laundries of New York have to have Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC) or some accreditation,” Romeo says. “You have to step back and ask what’s wrong with working closely with either HLAC or some other standard.”
If the bill passes, he sees a larger issue coming into play. There will be different standards in different cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. It’s going to become confusing.
“My concern is, say, New York is HLAC, then you have the state of New Jersey next door with different standards. How do you do business?” says Romeo. “Sometimes we start to see all these different types of standards for laundries. It’s just going to cause all kinds of confusion.”
He says that it’s important for the industry to pick the best standards and practices and then “stick together.”
Linda Fairbanks, executive director of ALM in Richmond, Ky., notes that even customers are getting confused when it comes to laundry standards.
“We have customers calling our office every day saying their current laundry is saying they have to do it this way. I have another laundry saying, no, that’s wrong, you have to do it this way. You have to have this accreditation. No, you have to be doing this on this basis. Plus, I’m a hospital, I’ve got the department of health telling me that in my state, I have to do X, Y and Z. The customers are getting very confused by the messages we’re sending them,” she says. “Outcomes should be, guidance should be, evidence-based.”
Cindy Molko, director for linen and central services at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and president-elect of ALM, says that the industry has the responsibility to be able to answer questions about accreditation—and to help maintain standards.
“Just because a laundry is HLAC-accredited doesn’t mean that sometimes they don’t fall off the wagon. This can happen if leadership changes and other individuals come in their place,” she says. “Any one of us who contracts with a laundry service or has their own laundry has a responsibility to stay on top of what those standards should be to make sure whoever you’re working with is following those standards.”
Molko says that laundry operators should also be on top of things in case something should happen so they can defend the situation to leadership or defend any question that might come up.
“I do believe a lot of [Torres’] comments can be addressed with industry standards,” says Romeo. “He talks about the stakeholders. If you are a hospital, why are you not, in an RFP, looking for a laundry that has some type of accreditation? That to me is part of the problem.”
In the end, he says that regulations will be detrimental to the industry as fees and costs will rise for laundry operations to do business with approval from government agencies.
EQUIPMENT LEASING
The group then moved on to the topic of equipment leasing. Fairbanks says that ALM rents its office copier. The lease includes toner, a certain number of printed pages, and maintenance.
What does the future hold if the laundry industry transitions to leasing equipment?
Mike Dineen, vice president, Pellerin Milnor Corp. in suburban New Orleans, representing TCATA, says that Milnor already works with a leasing company. He says leasing is available with smaller pieces of equipment, not large ones.
“In that discussion, there’s a maintenance factor in there. We want to make sure that if you have it for four years and go belly-up, we want that piece back that looks pretty good,” Dineen says. “So we have a maintenance arrangement to come back periodically and look at it.
“It’s very similar to leasing a car. If you were to take it down to a drag strip, paint a number on the side, you’re going to have to pay a lot at the end, rather than take care of it, oil changed and everything, turn it in and they’re very happy.”
Dineen shares the story of a laundry he visited because it was having trouble with a tunnel washer.
“The owner had a beautiful, new Mercedes he wanted to drive to lunch,” he says. “I said, ‘Are you going to have Jake change the oil and spark plugs in your new car?’ And he said, ‘Oh, no, no. I’m going to have this down to the dealer, and it’s going to be Hans from Germany who’s been in the factory.’ I said, ‘Bingo, that’s your problem. Why am I here? Because you’re having problems with a machine that is a little more sophisticated than the old machine that the mechanic knew inside and out.’
“It had 18 moving parts. This one has 4,000 little things, so you have to have the right people, you have to train, you have to have a budget, parts, and don’t let them go.”
Randy Wendland, corporate director of textile management services, ABM Healthcare Support Services in St. Clair Shores, Mich., and president of ALM, sees the maintenance factor as a continuing issue for laundry operations, whether equipment is leased or not.
“That’s something we’ve all been struggling with as we look for our succession plan,” he says. “We may not have those Navy guys as chief mechanics in our plants. When they’re going to retire, having to replace them is a huge challenge.”
Wendland sees a void for available training courses in the industry, and believes a good training program is needed for the maintenance staff of laundries.
“When I look at getting replacements, I look at the machine repair industry. It’s the closest discipline to what we’re looking for in laundry mechanics,” says Wendland. “But still they have to get the ins and outs of equipment.”
Dineen adds that laundries need to have a maintenance budget and a training budget. He says that in the future, maintenance could possibly have to be degreed engineers. So, laundries will have to pay more for their services.
“As we go forward, the industry is demanding that we have more sophisticated equipment,” he says. “It boils down to get the production, to get the throughput with fewer people, you are going to have more elaborate equipment that has to be taken care of.”
Ed McCauley, president and CEO, United Hospital Services in Indianapolis, past president of ARTA, believes leasing is risky from a manufacturer’s standpoint because of those variables that the company has no control over.
“For instance, nobody likes to maintain their equipment, so that’s going to have a big impact on the outputs and the life of the equipment,” he says. “Then you have operators that sometimes don’t understand or they have constraints and they load machines at 75% total. They don’t have the output that they’re supposed to get. It’s really up to the operator.”
Miss Part 1? Click here to read about U.S. textile mills.
Check back Thursday for the conclusion about automation and European advances.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].