Without a solid gameplan on how to tackle your business’ laundry needs, it can become a nightmare to deal with. Simply relying on garments that “look dirty” before they get treatment will only come around to bite you in the end. Whether your business is in healthcare, gym, or food service; it’s important to solidify a good routine to ensure your laundry is clean, fresh and safe for your needs.
1-Understand your Laundry Load Patterns.
You can’t improve something you don’t measure. Start by keeping a log of how much laundry you produce each day for about a week or so. Keep an eye out and track your peak days, for example restaurants would most likely be fridays and saturdays. Consolidate your different types of laundry, and keep track of that as well.
2-Match Frequency with Fabric Purpose:
Now that we have some data on laundry usage, take some time to also consider the purpose of the laundry, and you’ll realize that some articles need to be washed more frequently that the initial data might suggest.
Some examples for different types of industries:
Restaurants: Towels and aprons might need to be washed daily to keep up with food service safely.
Gyms: Towels at the gyms could potentially need to be washed twice or more a day on high peak days.
Medical / Dental: Scrubs, lab coats and other medical garments would probably have to be washed daily, and beddings could be reserved for patient volume.
Be sure to group frequent use items together to efficiently call out high priority loads.
3-Master your drop off, pickup and storage rotation for max efficiency.
Getting a predictable schedule for laundry supports operations, inventory management and staffing needs in ways you might not expect. Also cutting down the labor hours needed to efficiently handle the laundry in question can be a huge bonus of it’s own for any business.
Some simple tips to get this started:
Clearly label, or color code bins that specify wether laundry is “Clean”, “Dirty”, or “In Transit” can avoid unnecessary confusion on all levels.
Choose pickup days after high-volume days.
Maintain a 1.5-2x inventory per item so you are never struggling during processing time.
Keep all these things in mind when scheduling your weekly laundry routine. Be sure to contact your laundry provider (such as Monster Laundry) for extra support.
Join The Discussion!