Laundry efficiency comes from staff, layout decisions

While laundry efficiency can be gained from productive equipment, in terms of labor, the most improvement still comes from well-thought-out staffing and room layout.

Mark Heymann is chairman and CEO of UniFocus, a company that provides performance, workforce management and feedback solutions. When assessing laundry operations on-property, he said the biggest problem he sees is workflow.

He gave an example of folding. Sheet folding often requires two people to feed the machine and one person catching on the other side. This three-person setup needs to be adjusted when it comes to folding napkins, pillowcases and other small linens.

“To optimize [staff and machine run time], have three people feeding and one person catching,” he said. The other way “you are losing 50 percent production, which drives up labor cost and machine costs.”

If you don’t have enough people to efficiently get through pillowcases or napkins that day, save that task until you really need to get them done or have enough people.

Overall, Heymann said hotels need to approach laundry more like manufacturing work than hospitality, with the staff and workflow combining to maximize work hours and machine run time. The machine layout plays a big role in that, Heymann said. Dirty linens should come in one way and continue to move down the line logically, leading to the folding and ironing stations, which should be setup to allow staff to complete several tasks at once.

“You don’t want to have backflow,” he said. “If you see [dirty and clean] lines are crossing, you probably have a layout problem.”

An example of a layout that leads to labor efficiency for a small staff, the Motel 6 Northlake-Speedway (Texas) laundry room is situated directly behind the front desk with a monitor to show front desk activity. This allows the front desk employees to work in laundry during slow periods.

“Laundry is done throughout the day,” said GM Eric Eitner. “We try not to pile up too much.”