Lot management gives key to efficiency

In the UK’s textile rental industry, automation and streamlined systems for garment handling and processing have become acknowledged by many businesses as essential.

Now, with customer demands for higher quality standards and for high efficiency with work turnrounds, new attention is being given to the ways in which technology can further boost textile renters’ performance. Clearly, significant developments will continue to occur in garment handling control.

According to Chris Ducker, chairman of equipment and systems supplier Ducker UK, a new style of lot management will be advocated in the textile rental sector.

Advanced lot management will, through powerful computerisation, enhance in-plant and external communication. Garments will be comprehensively tracked and their life histories checked, efficiency with storage and despatch tasks will be optimised, and laundry staff performance will be monitored.

Revenue checks

Furthermore, the textile renter will be able to assess the value of contracts, checking piece costs against piece revenue.

With an advanced lot management approach, work may be fed by monorail system to a continuous batch washer or to washer-extractors. After washing, the work can be carried by flatbed conveyor or small loop monorail conveyor and discharged onto tables or drums at which operators can easily pick up garments and dress hangers. As work is pre-sorted into lots, operators’ working rates are not slowed down by classification tasks. A lot management approach can only be really effective when garment handling through a plant is truly co-ordinated.

It has to be noted that if washed garments are being transported to the finishing area by a monorail system they must not be contained in bags for too long a time. If they are, compression creasing may arise.

Keith Crawley, general manager of the Bradford and Batley plants of Brooks, underlines the importance to the rental industry of garment auto-tracking systems that are able to identify where items are on a real-time basis. Without an auto-tracking system, a launderer’s experience may have to be relied on to locate the whereabouts of “missing items”. While such experience is valued, it cannot match the finding efficiency of advanced tracking technology.

Auto-tracking provides information on rewashing and highlights missed despatch days and shortages. It gives a continually up-to-date picture of what is happening in a plant.

On the item identification front, a move from barcodes to radio frequency systems has slowed, Mr Ducker considers.

Some launderers are waiting for further radio frequency technology refinement to give increased benefits to set against costs. Faster speed of working with RF technology is being sought.

Accountability

Mr Crawley says a barcode system used for garment management provides useful accountability. It prevents a financial drain arising because of lost garments, and it can usefully draw a customer’s attention to how garments are being under- or over-used.

The right level of garment use is often essential and this is particularly true in food companies which may have their maintenance of due diligence questioned if the garment change rate is inadequate.

Providing customers with a greater level of information enhances the launderer-customer relationship, Mr Crawley comments.

He adds that computer-generated packing lists are accepted as accurate by customers while handwritten ones do not give the same sense of precision.

Both Mr Ducker and Mr Crawley point to likely requirements for greater garment change rates in the food sector.

Already, a number of changes a day may be stipulated. Employees in some food areas should have fresh workwear after each lavatory break.

The food industry has extremely high expectations of workwear quality and hygiene standards.

Mr Crawley says that at the post-washing hanger-dressing stage, operators may be seen as valued quality inspectors. Their experience can identify when washroom performance is unsatisfactory.

However, Mr Ducker believes that inspection at this stage can hinder efficiency. Handling wet garments to inspect them and identify any problems may slow the operator’s work rate.

Some clients of garment rental businesses demand that clean workwear items are wrapped, and Mr Crawley says that there can be drawbacks to such wrapping for the customer. Used polythene wrapping has to be disposed of and, if lying on a floor, can present a safety hazard. Furthermore, polythene sweats and bacteria may grow on a wrapped garment – particularly in warm and humid conditions.

Automation with garment folding and bagging is now available, Mr Ducker points out. Single items can be handled, and multi-packs dealt with. A final check of garments in a multi-pack may be difficult given that individual item identification is required.

Complete service

Mr Crawley expects to see growth in the provision, by garment renters, of complete laundering and item-handling services, including dealing with garments at a customer’s sites, as more customers wish to contract out what they see as non-core activities.

There is considerable added value in a rental service incorporating on-site distribution and he believes that this should be reflected in the service cost.

Where the number of garments being delivered to premises is small, a driver may carry out on-site distribution. On larger locations, the driver may be met by a rental company distribution operator who will work at the site for the required period before moving on to the next one. To cope with the on-site distribution needs of a location with a large number of wearers, several rental company personnel may be employed full time.

It is worth noting that a professional counter and checker from the rental sector will have a particular work discipline which gives greater service accuracy than that usually achieved by a member of the customer’s staff for whom garment handling is only one of a number of regular tasks.

Brooks’ Bradford and Batley plants are the first in the company to achieve an Investors in People accreditation. Comprehensive training has enabled Brooks’ personnel at the plants to work at their best levels, gaining multi-skill proficiency and higher motivation, Mr Crawley says. Emphasis has been on the value of the group’s people. Personnel like the challenge of tackling a variety of tasks and better laundering production is achieved.