Practices By: Roberto Villarreal and David Monk Best B Dedicated commercial laundries provide clean linens and textiles while reducing unnecessary headaches. Being the manager of a commercial laundry plant is a challenging and exciting job. Commercial laundry plants are modern, auto-mated plants with impressive material handling capacity; they are more like manufacturing plants than drycleaners or coin-operated laundries. The overall goal of any commercial laundry plant is to have a solid operation and an experi-enced manager that can offer practical solutions to everyday problems. A laundry manager can face administration challenges that deal with expensive equipment breakdowns, implementing a linen management program or dealing with rising cotton prices and reducing operating costs. While most commercial laundry plants are at least 30,000 square feet, some can be larger. A typical layout includes separate areas for sort-ing linens, washing and drying, ironing and fold-ing, shipping, storage, utilities and office space. The typical commercial laundry washes enough linen to fill 10 to 20 trucks per day with clean goods. of chemistry needed to effectively launder the linen. A CBW system is the preferred operation meth-od for commercial laundries as a result of the energy, water and chemical savings they provide. In addition, the extraction presses used in sequence with a CBW system remove high quan-tities of water from processed goods, allowing for dryers and flatwork ironers to consume less energy to dry and iron linen. Dryers with sophisticated drum designs are able to circulate heat more efficiently than older, less advanced units, and onboard residual moisture sensors save energy by preventing over-drying of linens. Choosing a chemical vendor is also important to save on utilities, and most of them have a com-mitment towards implementing “environmentally friendly” laundering chemistry formulas that help to reduce consumption of resources. David Monk is the general manager of environmental ser-vices and laundry at the Valley Baptist Health System. Monk, who received his Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Alvernia College in 2004, has over 18 years’ experience in the industry and has done many things to help with cost savings and customer service in his operation. Roberto Villarreal is the ARAMARK laundry manager for Valley Baptist Health System. Villarreal, who has been the EVS/laundry business for seven years, has a Bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Texas at Brownsville and will receive his MBA in the fall of 2012. Be Mindful Of Maintenance A strong maintenance program is vital for continu-ous success with plant production and customer satisfaction. Having a mechanic as part of the team is more cost effective than the constant need for external vendor support, especially if the machines have many years behind them. The typical vendor charges high-dollar labor rates plus trip and lodging charges. It is imperative that detailed recordkeeping takes place with all laundry plant machines and should include the issue resolved, parts used, dol-lars spent and labor utilized. Even more important, manufacturer service schedules for preventive maintenance must be followed to assure lifespan longevity of the machine. A Localized Approach Commercial laundry plants can serve custom-ers within a 150-mile radius of the plant and are equipped with sophisticated equipment, such as continuous batch washers (CBW) and indus-trial dryers. CBW systems use different cylinders or modules for each stage of the wash cycle and automatically move the goods from one stage to the next. CBW systems use approximately 60 percent less water per pound of linen laundered than conventional washers. Using less water also reduces the energy required to heat it and, consequently, the amount for more info Visit www.cmmonline.com and type in search keyword: Cleaning . For more information on related products, visit www.cmmonline.com , select SUPPLIER SEARCH from the main navigation bar, and enter keyword: Laundry . 18 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • March 2012 Image courtesy of the GAO Group Commercial Laundry
CMM – Archives Mar 2012: 18
