In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provides human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly decreases the need for human sensory and mental requirements. Automation is the key to productivity and a prerequisite to minimize the throughput time, reducing the media consumption and damage to textiles.
The technological developments in laundry may not seem to have moved on as dramatically as in other areas, but it has improved both efficiency and quality of the laundry operations. Amalgamating the recent developments, an automated system can be proposed that will:
• Eliminate manual cataloging of clothes
• Eliminate manual searching for customer’s clothes
• Eliminate such error as misplaced/miscataloged clothes
• Reporting of any missing or late clothes
• Must be safe for end users
• Have manual backup if the system fails
Control Your Business, Reduce Waste and Increase Profits
No matter how long have you been in this business, there is always scope to improve efficiency, minimize wastage and reduce expenses! This can only happen if we have the information such as the workload across months, weeks and days, understand demand for each process and type of cloth, expenses across departments, returns for every marketing initiative, top 100 customers and more data points.
Automation in process of laundries will have the following advantages:
• Optimization of the production process
• Make a better data flow
• Quality assurance
• Cost transparence
With increasing volumes of work required to operate efficiently in today’s highly competitive laundry sector, the modern laundry must ensure its sorting department is using its staff efficiently. State-of-the-art production technologies also provide a safer work environment and improve productivity without compromising on high quality standards.
Processing hundreds of thousands of items of dirty linen each week means that the laundry will gain an understanding of its customers’ requirements and the types of soiled linen they usually send in.
A quality assurance plan ensures that systems and procedures are in place to guarantee that services are provided according to the standards set. This commitment to quality will include complete sorting and separation of all textiles into their correct classifications. In most cases, this will be done before washing but foul and infected linen should already be separated out and bagged up in special bags and must be sorted after washing. The classifying process means that specific formulations can be used for each specific textile type used.
Auto-dosing is one of the simplest and most cost effective ways to help achieve the best possible wash quality with minimal consumption.
Auto-dosing helps to:
- Eliminate detergent waste, over-use and theft
- Maximize staff’s time
- Remove the need for staff to handle laundry chemicals
- Prevent chemical spills, making for a cleaner, safer environment
- A range of liquid products which are automatically pumped into the washing machine thus removing the need to manually dose any chemicals. Auto dose ensures accurate dosing for every wash, every time.
Why auto dose? Less wastage due to no over dosing. Less re-wash from under dosing. Consistency of Performance. No direct contact with chemical products. Less pilferage. No drawer dispenser cleaning.
Typically commercial laundries that support hospitality and healthcare clients use washing machines, washer extractors & dryers. These automated washers require sophisticated controls to optimize the operation of the washer, dryers, shuttles, and conveyors that move the laundry through the plant. Precise control of every step in the process minimizes energy, water, and chemical consumption, while providing the desired cleaning to the high-volume of linen.
By automation, several types of information are gathered:
- All actual machine data in real time on the status of the machines; the presence of the operators at the individual working spaces; the type of garment or textile being processed; all stored data such as total production time, (running, being serviced, waiting, stopped), throughput per machine, per batch or even per operator.
- Statistics on the consumption of water, gas, steam, electricity and can supply exact data for creating delivery notes and invoices for end customers.
- It reduces manpower and its cost.
- The entire process time and batch is prefixed and controlled by PLC.
- By following the system, the daily profitability can be viewed batch-wise and customer-wise.
Hence the establishment of a well controlled automated system will help achieving several records and reports required.