Managing the cost of resources

1 April 2005



Laundry and textile rental managers need to work even harder at managing resources to remain competitive. Richard Neale gives pointers to best practice


The pressure on laundries to manage costs effectively is being stepped up. The market leader for energy consumption is now achieving 1.1kWh/kg of work processed, which is 35% below the lowest figure for 1985.

Laundries and rental operators using more than 4.5litres of water/kg are unlikely to remain economic. To survive they must keep up with the best.

Those at the forefront of cost management are using certain pointers to maintain sensible margins in today’s market.

There are three main areas for the general manager to identify and sort out:

? critical inputs to the business

?optimum use of resources (water, energy, chemicals and so on)

? machine productivity

Critical inputs

It is more important to maintain and tune machines than to replace them with the latest model. Laundering equipment has a long life and its output and operating cost rely more on careful setting-up and regular adjustment than on the latest design features.

The plant must be provided with a steady and reliable flow of steam at the correct pressure with no water droplets in it.

Maintaining the correct pressure keeps ironers and tumblers at the right temperature and avoids the risk of damp work, sheet rolling or mildewed towels.

Producing a consistently dry steam avoids water logging of the ironer beds and dryer batteries. It also keeps iron out of the washing machines, thereby extending linen life by improving both its strength and colour. Softening the water to zero hardness will avoid greying towels and cut down on the detergent needed, so producing clean work at a minimum cost.

The softener should be checked both just before and just after regeneration, to ensure that regeneration intervals are neither too short (which wastes a lot of money) nor too long (which produces variable wash quality).

The quality of the compressed air is measured by the consistency of its pressure, by the quality of its oiling and by its dryness.

Variable pressure leads to inconsistency at the ironer rams and surprises at the folder. Water vapour in the air condenses at all the wrong points in the system and will cause pistons to stick, accelerate corrosion and shorten seal life.

Well-oiled air lubricates all the right surfaces, so smart launderers make sure that the air cooler is condensing out the water droplets and that the in-line oilers are full and functioning.

Many harassed laundry managers find buying textiles a puzzling process. But if the specification leaves room for errors, they could face the problems of dealing with an inadequate specification for years.

Textile constructions change as frequently as detergent systems. The purchase prices of rental items have fallen as quickly as the rental price over the last few years.

Ensuring the specification is right may be complicated, but rental operators cannot afford to make mistakes in this area.

Skills and training

The importance of making sure that the laundry has skilled staff is often overlooked.

The industry as a whole has bemoaned its fate as a payer of low wages, then expressed surprise that there is a shortage of supermen and superwomen to produce the quality and quantity at the right price to meet customer requirements.

Even in plants where staff morale is high, a committed workforce may still be struggling with poorly maintained equipment, variable boiler pressure, intermittently hard water and other difficulties.

Market leaders have always recognised the importance of training but it is only in the last twelve months that this has been successfully linked into major programmes to raise margins and free critical areas from bottlenecks.

The new Guild of Cleaners and Launderers syllabus for the Laundry Supervisor Certificate defines the benchmark for trained supervisory staff and The Guild will be following it up this year with one for the laundry engineer.

Daily management

The laundry team must take responsibility for the use and cost of utilities, by managing them on a day-to-day basis.

Even when the inputs are right, laundries cannot expect to rely on the equipment and the detergent supply to deliver low cost ratios.

The industry has suffered a serious loss in the last few years as many of the managers trained by the old British Laundry Research Association have retired. These managers made running a laundry look so easy, but how did they do it?

Water costs are managed by increasing and maintaining load weights close to the original design figures. Every demand to run machines with less than the full load should be investigated thoroughly, and underloading should not be accepted unless it is the only way.

Dip levels on washer-extractors should be tuned and pruned for every wash, followed by a few experimental reductions in detergent dosage (to bring the alkali concentrations down to their pre-pruning level).

Rinse dips must be challenged in the same way.

Have a regular clean and check routine for tunnel washer bypass valves and flow meter floats.

Managing energy costs means optimising washer-extractor spin times and membrane press extraction cycles to ensure that wherever possible the moisture retention for cotton goods has been reduced to nearly 50% or even less. Removing moisture from a terry towel by tumbling still costs fifteen times more than removing it by spinning or squeezing.

Electricity costs have long been the most difficult of the energy consumption figures to improve.

To cut costs here, you need to manage compressed air leaks and oil tank heating. Frequently 50% of the power of a 20kW compressor motor will be supplying air leaks. Oil tanks should be heated mainly by steam and there should be little or no call on the electric immersion unit.

Inverter drives are finding their place on all of the largest motors in the laundry – boiler fan, ironer drive, washer-extractor and air compressor.

The cost of the investment in inverter motors is usually recovered within four years, especially if the plant is struggling to keep within its maximum demand target.

Most laundries will have already pared chemical costs tightly, but there is usually much more mileage to be had from developing a working relationship with the detergent supplier to help control some of the other utility costs.

Textile life is the most important of these. Many rental businesses spend over 20% of the revenue budget on new textiles. However, they rarely know the average cycles to failure for each type of item, or make any significant attempt to manage this figure up to a commercially acceptable level.

With sheets lasting anywhere between 25 and 175 cycles, any laundry that is still working on fewer than 150 cycles should be able to trim far more off the textiles budget than they might be paying for the entire detergent service!

Machine productivity

The level of stained and creased rewash varies from site to site between 1% and 5% with occasional peaks up to 20%.

For an industry which is probably only making 15% return on sales, a stained rewash level above 1.5% is unacceptable and needs to be challenged with a rewash analysis and modifications to the wash process or machine loading.

The same target applies to creased rewash which should always be traced back to the cause, for example faulty folder settings.

Tunnel finisher productivity is based on consistency of moisture in the fabric, good presentation on the hanger and a loading of just one garment per peg.

It should work at maximum output as long as it has a well-controlled circulating air temperature, the filters are cleaned regularly and it is operated continuously. If any of these conditions are wrong, or feeding is intermittent then output and quality will quickly fall off.

Multi-roll ironers rely on good mechanical alignment, even bed heating and uniform vacuum through well-clothed, well sprung rolls. Getting these right is the key to a textile output which comes close to the manufacturer’s original claims!

Tumble dryer productivity relies more on the efficiency of de-watering in the washer-extractor or membrane press.

However, once this is correct, then attention to the heating system will give the correct air inlet temperature and detailed maintenance of the air flow system will ensure that the hot air actually mixes with the tumbling work in sufficient quantity to dry it in around 18 minutes.

The cycle needs to be stopped quickly, when the work is dry. For preference, this should be done automatically. Three minutes overdrying increases energy consumption by 15% and drying is already the most energy-inefficient part of the entire laundry operation. Over-drying can also reduce fabric life.

If the practices I have described seem too complicated, you could be in the wrong job.

Achieving financial success in the modern laundry means mastering the intricacies of laundry engineering and than applying them to all the technical steps needed to produce clean and well presented textiles at an affordable price.


Critical control points Critical control points
The main factors The main factors
Water Water


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