CM/Spotlight: hard floor care case study ProTeam Inc. Team Cleaning With Backpack Vacuums Means Productivity Mitch Murch’s Maintenance Management has improved worker productivity by 180 percent with lightweight ProTeam vacuums. M Mitch Murch’s Maintenance Management (MMMM) is one of the largest janito-rial and related service suppliers in the Midwest and Southeast regions of the United States. The company employs a team of 3,500 individuals to clean over 100 buildings covering 60 million square feet. With a daily workload of such immense proportions, MMMM maintains a con-stant focus on productivity, safety and environmental health. From cleaning a branch bank to managing a multi-million-square-foot account, MMMM ensures that each cli-ent receives the same level of service in line with company ethics and standards. For their efforts, MMMM has been awarded both the ISSA Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS) and ISSA CIMS-Green Building (CIMS-GB) with Honors. Years ago, in a wide-scale effort to improve productivity and indoor air qual-ity across the board, MMMM switched to Team Cleaning ® with ProTeam ® back-pack vacuums. At the time, the company utilized bagless uprights with acceptable, but not stellar, results. “The underlying issues were air quality and lower productivity,” says Bill Crouch, vice president of training and compliance at MMMM. “While we initially incorporat-ed Team Cleaning as a means to improve productivity, we were quite surprised at the increase in quality. Our customers have commented on the positive change in quality, as well as the reduction in missed tasks. Team Cleaning assures a stronger likelihood that all requirements will be filled the first time.” Proof In Numbers As for productivity, the results say everything: Worker productivity has improved from 2,500 square feet per hour to over 7,000 square feet per hour — a dramatic 180 percent upswing. ProTeam backpack vacuums eliminate the push/pull strain of standard uprights and allow workers to quickly cover ground on both carpet and hard floor surfaces in a natural sweeping motion. This ease of use and ergonomic design ensures worker comfort, while increasing cleaning speeds. “The increase in productivity has allowed us to take time to address issues that might have previously been pushed to the back burner,” says Crouch. “When we finish on time or even before the allot-ted time, we can now go back to the build-ing and follow-up on periodic cleaning or special requests. We do a much better job of staying on a regular schedule now that we’ve built a team environment where everyone shares in our successes.” MMMM also developed a thorough green cleaning program utilizing back-pack vacuums and other equipment rec-ognized as environmentally friendly. All ProTeam backpacks include Four Level Filtration ® , a multi-stage system that extracts and eliminates 99.9 percent of allergens and particulates down to 1 micron in size. “While we can’t positively document changes in occupant health, there’s no question that we are removing more harmful particulates each day by using the four-filtered backpacks and taking pollutants out the door each evening,” notes Crouch. “There’s no question that our old upright vacuuming method was just redistributing the dirt for another day. After two weeks in a new account, we can tell that we are making progress by observing the amount of dusting we have to do.” According to Crouch, after using prop-erly filtered vacuums, the dusting need is greatly reduced and remains at a notice-ably lower level. CM Circle Product Information no. 152 This content was provided by ProTeam as part of a paid advertisement. For more information, please contact ProTeam at 1-866-888-2168 or www.pro-team.com. 26 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ® • March 2011
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