Laundering Inefficiency Out Of The Laundry Room

Here's how some hotels are reducing laundry costs and staff hours at their properties.

Beth Kormanik, Buyer Interactive

In an ideal laundry system, there would always be enough linens on hand to turn guestrooms. There would never be any downtime between washing and drying loads and the room would be set up for maximum efficiency and air flow. Every towel, sheet and duvet would come out spotless.

Is that too much to ask?

While the reality is often far from this ideal, Glenn Hardman wonders why hotels can't narrow the gap. Hardman is president of RGH Hospitality, a commercial hotel management company that operates six hotels in the Northeast. He is always looking for ways to make his properties more efficient, and he is among the hoteliers and equipment suppliers who have identified the laundry room as a good place to start.

Hotels are processing more laundry than ever, especially as duvets replaced the seldom-washed bedspreads and "even the cover on the lumbar pillow has to come off every time the room changes," Hardman said. "It's good because the customer has confidence that the product they're slipping into is clean."

High volume means plenty of pressure to run efficient laundry rooms. Hardman identified several issues that managers should address, starting with the right inventory. He recommends having three turns of laundry on hand that move through a laundry "triangle" from the storeroom to the guest room, the guest room to the laundry room and the laundry room back to the storeroom.

Inaccurate inventory can cause headaches, Hardman said.

"If you don't have enough stock to move through the triangle, your housekeeping staff are yelling and saying, 'I can't finish my rooms because I don't have enough towels or sheets,'" he said. "Now you're processing out of sequence and you have to drop everything. The No. 1 time waster is poor inventory control. We try to guard against it."

Wasted time, of course, means wasted money.

To control labor costs, Hardman's hotels do not budget a fixed number of staff hours for laundry service. The labor is determined by the number of rooms sold divided by 13, the number of rooms per hour management believes should be processed. So if 130 rooms are scheduled, and the rate is 13 rooms per hour of laundry, the hotel will need 10 hours of laundry staff.

There are other ways to control labor costs, according to Kim Shady, vice president of distributor sales at UniMac. The company, which makes commercial laundry equipment, has served the hospitality industry for over 60 years at properties such as the Casino Royale in Las Vegas.

"Fifty percent of cost of operating laundry is labor," Shady said. "If you really want to have a more efficient laundry, you have to look at how you control your labor costs. My experience is, in lodging properties not large enough to have a full-time supervisor in laundry, there is no supervision. No one is watching to see, 'Can I get by with less labor?'"

One of UniMac's new products, the UniLinc, is what he calls "the eyes and ears of the laundry room." Daily, weekly and monthly maintenance tips pop up on the screen automatically to remind staff when to check that their equipment is running smoothly.

Keeping machines in good condition means they run most efficiently. If the staff doesn't change lint traps, lubricate the bearings on washer, or remove hard water deposits from the hose bibs, then it will take longer for each load to finish. And that means staff must work longer, driving up costs.

UniLinc also creates reports with a time and date stamp on more than 100 different activities, such as when each cycle started and finished. Shady said the manager can use that data to find idle times between cycles and possibly reschedule staff, or track trends such as how long it takes to fill washing machines with water. If it starts to take longer, that could indicate a maintenance issue.

Shady also suggested that hotels need to know when to replace their equipment. He credited Motel 6 with taking the lead in developing standards for how long machines should last and when managers should start planning a replacement. When service costs per year hit a certain amount or a machine reaches a certain age, Shady said a hotel should consider buying new.

One trend in efficient laundry systems is literally having efficient equipment. Advanced Laundry Solutions is offering a 75-pound dryer that uses only 10 percent of the energy of conventional dryers. Additionally, none of the water used goes down the drain; instead, it's diverted for use in the washing machines.

"The conventional dryer has to be the most inefficient piece of equipment anyone can buy," said Managing Partner Brian Weinstein. He said the dryers are perfect for hotels that want to go green and said the new product is in use at two beta sites, the Crowne Plaza Times Square in Manhattan and a Ramada in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

With hotel managers reluctant to make capital purchases, Advanced Laundry Solutions is renting out its equipment. Weinstein said the energy savings are more than the rental cost.

"You pull out the old unit and the day you put ours in, you're cash-neutral and maybe cash-positive," he said.

Hardman said he believes the green movement is more than a trend. He offered several other tips to an efficient laundry room:

* Select the proper size equipment for the laundry demand at the hotel and do complete loads to save water and energy.
* Design the room with washers are adjacent to the dryers so staff do not have to put laundry in carts, move it 20-30 feet and then move it again.
* Set up laundry chemicals on a self-feeding system that is pre-programmed based on the type of laundry. His hotels use Proctor & Gamble chemicals, which a representative checks and monitors monthly.
* Limit the cycle times to lowest possible amount to clean the product.
* Make sure your staff thoroughly examines the linen so that they can separate items that need pre-treating. This helps eliminate loss.

These steps lead to a better set up for the staff, a better use of resources and a better experience for the hotel's guests.

"You don't want anything to go back to the room if it's not perfect," Hardman said.