Credentials - Linen and Laundry

Overview


Invited to help a major player in the hotel sector resolve a challenging problem, I helped the business set new ambitions and provided an fresh external perspective, which "debunked" what they and their suppliers through they knew about their industry.


I helped the client team to see their business with a new perspective and importantly their customers' perspective.


A significant part of the challenge, was the strong dependency on third party suppliers. Much of the opportunity lay in the suppliers domain to influence. I guided my client through building more strategic relationships with their suppliers, which would enable integrated end-to-end transformation with equitable benefits.


What we achieved massively exceeded the client's brief and expectations.

Components


  • Coaching Client's Team
  • Lean DMAIC
  • Full Value Stream Diagnostic
  • Game-Changing Solutions
  • Strategic Sourcing
  • Challenged established industry norms
  • Commercial Solution
  • Multi-million GBP Unexpected Benefits

The Brief and Expectations


The Chief Operating Officer was frustrated that every time he met with his House Keeping Teams, they would complain that "Linen" was the biggest source of problems they faced in their work. That might be wrong linen, not enough linen, dirty linen, damaged linen, late collections and so on. He would promise to do something to help them and then give them "...a new mop...".


He really wanted to do something that would delight his House Keepers. If there were financial benefits as well, that would be fantastic, but he was prepared to spend money for his House Keepers. (What a fantastic brief and a fantastic COO!!)


The business' Transformation Director was keen to use a Lean for the work and I outlined an approach following the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control) methodology.

Getting Started


We pulled together a team from various parts of the business, with the intention of both gaining their insights and leaving the business better equipped to tackle future change through experience of this piece of work.


Our first sessions together were to set ambitions, understand value and unlearn any limiting, traditional ideas of performance and value.

We also planned out our program of work and how to engage the third party commercial laundries into the program.

5 Principles of Lean


  • Understand what is Value (what a customer gladly pay for)
  • Understand how Value Flows
  • Make Value Flow
  • At the Pull of the Customer
  • Pursue Perfection

One of the biggest challenges I have faced in almost every program, has two elements to it. One is a low level of ambition. The other side of that is a complacency or emotional connection with what already exists. This is all part of the change resistance curve, but it's something that high-performing businesses handle very very very very well.


So for our first team session, we talked about the linen/laundry flow at a very high level, just so we could explore "value".

We would look at the flow in terms of what happens to Linen (represented by Shaun the Sheet) and what a hotel guest (Jacqueline) might want of the Linen flow.


With these in mind it was easier for the team to be hyper-critical in their thinking.

Linen Flow


At a very high-level, linen has a cyclical flow, which notionally starts with linen being packed into cages at a commercial laundry, ready for delivery to hotels. At the hotel, linen is stored awaiting use. It is then put onto House Keepers trolleys for moving to the guest rooms. Linen maybe rejected for being dirty or damaged. The linen is used by the guest. When the room is made, the linen is removed and caged for sending to the laundry, where it is laundered and ready for packing or storage.

When I challenged the team to call out what the hotel guest was really willing to pay for in the linen process, it was very obviously the experience of the linen during their stay, whether that be the texture, cleanliness, thread-count, etc. It could be debated that a guest may consider paying more to improve their linen experience, resulting from the laundering process.


Similarly the linen being used by the guest to their satisfaction, is what generates the income for the hotel.


If we consider what the customer is paying for as Value-Add, then everything else in the Linen flow is some form of Waste, which can target. Some will be Necessary Non Value Add activity. That is those things we need to do to operate. Others will be Non Value Add. That is things that we just don't want to do at all, for example, nobody wants there to be linen to be rejected, along with all the activity and overhead associated with that.

We selected a variety of hotels, giving a good mix of location, size, age, laundry supplier and customer mix.

At each hotel and the corresponding laundry, we followed the linen through the process. We interviewed the people involved, both the management and the people actually performing the work. We observed what was really happening and tested out understanding with those involved.


I coached the client team in seeing past what we were shown, looking around the environment, asking revealing questions, getting below the given explanations and always respecting the individuals.


<<<   "Don't Blame People. Blame the Process."   >>>


  • I mapped the Linen flow, "warts and all". I documented the Pain Points experienced and quantified the occurrences and impact
  • We made the Pain Points tangible with appropriately sourced data and costing information
  • I lead Root Cause Problem Solving sessions to go beyond the symptom to find what really needed to be different
  • We tested back our findings we the people involved through various forums
  • I bench-tested parts of the Flow to check the voracity of some industry "wisdom"
  • I summarised the opportunities that could be addressed and proposed a package of Counter Measures
  • For each Root-Cause I proposed a solution
  • I developed out a To-Be Linen Flow
  • I guided the client team through identifying the nature of benefits and quantifying the scale of benefits

Counter Measures


I use the term Counter Measures, rather than Solutions. "Solutions" has an inference of finality, whereas the Lean mindset is to pursue perfection, never giving up on the next improvement.


I developed this package of counter-measures, that would make the lives of House Keepers much better and would generate financial benefits, whilst positively impacting the guest experience.

  • Smart Ordering
    • Smart Ordering integrates the hotel booking systems with the laundry production ordering to proactively predict both the clean linen requirements and the volume of dirty linen to be removed.
    • Use of statistical tools and AI would allow the customer mix, patterns of booking, "walk-in guests", no-shows and late cancellations for each hotel to be incorporated into an accurate prediction of demand.
    • Previously laundries had used variations of fixed orders, modified by House Keeper interventions on a best-efforts basis with limited supporting information. Bench-testing demonstrated the previous fixed-order methods guaranteed failure. House Keepers were continuously struggling with linen inventories, short-stock and uncollected dirty-linen.
    • There was no planning around dirty linen collection volumes other than the experience of the delivery drivers.
    • Linen would be in the right place at the right time (preventing the need for hotels to share linen)
  • Pack to Order
    • Change the capability of the laundry providers to pack to actual orders.
    • The Smart Ordering would be essential in eliminating disruption from "emergency orders" causing short packing. The integration of genuine demand with factory and logistics planning would prevent short-orders
    • Linen "Super-Markets" would be installed at the end of production lines as a short stock holding to marry the economic batch-sizing of the laundry with the order packing demand
  • Deliver to Room
    • A new delivery system to be developed, for packing directly from the laundry packing area, ready to be delivered directly to the hotel floor it would be used on, bypassing any further handling or storage.
    • There was a fundamental disconnect between how linen was packed off the line in SKUs (Stock Keeping Units or types of linen e.g. double sheet, pillow case, etc) and how it would be consumed at the hotel.
    • The disconnect demanded that all linen be unpacked from the laundry cages, stored and reloaded in the mix required to service rooms on House Keepers trolleys
    • The linen was exposure to damage and soiling from the additional handling and storage
    • This new design was to be made available for all hotel brands as a commercialised joint-venture, to create benefits for both the hotel group and their strategic laundry partners.
  • HK Tools - One-Stop Shop
    • Consolidating all the tools required by House Keepers into a single platform.
    • Make the new tools available where the House Keeper was, i.e. portable device tools.
    • Equitable assignment of room-making to House Keepers, driven by Smart-Order
  • Huddles
    • Drive Continuous Improvement through practical means
    • It became very apparent that the management were disconnected from the reality of what was happening in their hotels. They had a view of what they thought was happening, but it was different in reality
    • The operating staff needed a means to call out a concern and have support in generating counter measures
    • Great ideas could have been shared across hotels
    • EVERY business I have ever been to suffers from disconnected management to some extent and would benefit massively from deliberate Continuous Improvement
    • The Huddles approach would be deployed through both the hotel group and their strategic laundry partners
  • Quality Assurance

    There were a suite of opportunities around QA, i.e. the proactive assurance that the operation would wotk well, rather than traditional QC where failures are detected:-

    • The laundries were all off the pace in maintenance engineering practices. They were just implementing Planned Preventative Maintenance. This practice has been seen in other industries for several decades. The industry closed shop "30 years experience" experts had not moved forward.
    • QA would include a progression beyond PPM to Condition Based Maintenance (thermal strips, vibration sensors, etc), then Predictive Maintenance and towards Total Production Management. A history of equipment data would need to build for the benefits to realise, but they would.
    • Habits and routines that predicted successful outcomes would be employed and process confirmations assure them
  • Service Management

    A significant change was the move from multiple laundry providers (based on lowest price negotiation) to a few strategic laundry partners (based on maximising shared value). 


    I guided my client through RFI, RFP and contract negotiation to create partnerships characterised by:-

    • collaborative problem solving
    • shared benefits
    • commercialisation opportunities from the improvements made
    • a focus on what could be achieved rather than what went wrong
    • joint facility inspections and overall operation reviews to drive improvements
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