APRIL 2014
CINCINNATI — On March 14, La Quinta Inns & Suites and Standard Textile partnered to break three Guinness World Records®. Using more than 2,500 red, white and blue towels donated by Standard Textile, La Quinta employees formed a 26,390-square-foot U.S. flag “Towel Mosaic,” the world’s largest, in Hawaii’s Waikoloa Bowl near Honolulu. Participants also made the longest “Human Towel Chain,” with 1,113 participants, and the longest “High-Five Chain,” with 1,110 participants. All of the towels were later donated to Fisher House – Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. Fisher House Foundation provides a network of comfort homes near major military and VA medical centers nationwide. These homes allow military and veterans’ families to stay nearby at no cost while a loved one receives treatment. All three records were set in 90 minutes by La Quinta employees who were in Hawaii for the company’s annual meeting. Guinness World Records® adjudicator Alex Angert was present at the event and made the records official. Video highlights of the record-setting event can be found at http://youtu.be/ALN a1l8KqXrco.
Volume 40, Number 4
BY CARLO CALMA, EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CHICAGO — Jon Witschy, sales manager of Spindle Technologies’ management software team, is a true believer of the adage, “What gets measured gets managed.” “It’s very important to have good criteria for determining how well things are going in the business,” he says. Witschy stressed the importance of creating standards and criteria for laundry processes in a recent Association for Linen Management (ALM) webinar, Set Expectations, Track Results and Make an Impact on Your Bottom Line. “Standards allow you to review the inner workings within a facility to make improvements possible in various areas, and to zero in on issues, whether it’s with personnel or production equipment, or process flow,” says Witschy, who adds that standards ultimately create structure and cohesion within a business. “The standards, and the analysis of the standards, become a language that is understood at all levels of the organization, from the plant floor to management.”
(Image licensed by Ingram Publishing) NEED FOR STANDARDS
One metric of determining whether a business is accomplishing cohesion is through the work performance of its team members. “Operators benefit from detailed feedback on their individual performance, and that can’t really be measured [without standards],” says Witschy. “[Standards] make it more possible to coach employees.”
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — TRSA (the Textile Rental Services Association) has added a new certification for laundries serving the food manufacturing/processing sectors to its series of certifications for the textile services industry. TRSA President and CEO Joseph Ricci introduced the Hygienically Clean Food Safety program at the recent American Reusable Textile Association (ARTA) Education Conference. The program aims to emphasize best practices for laundry processes and quality control, and will
be verified though facility inspection and microbial testing of reusable textiles by independent, third-party testers, TRSA says. Evaluation of a plant’s hazard analysis procedures, its use of an operational flowchart, and confirmation of other handling and processing practices are among key activities for certification, and will be conducted in an initial inspection. The inspection will additionally verify that laundries are adhering to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and
See STANDARDS on Page 19
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) directives. As part of the certification process, facilities must undergo monthly bacteriological testing. A laundry that passes inspection and three consecutive months of testing will be awarded certification, and to maintain it, tests must be replicated every six months and the plant must pass inspections every three years. The Hygienically Clean certification program was the first in the U.S. to establish measurable microbial limits for laundered
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INSIDE Panel of Experts Group offers tips for maintaining an adequate, secure linen inventory.
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This is especially true for laundry operators who manage multiple locations, he says. “Multi-site operations have the opportunity to set benchmarks so that production performance evaluation can zero in on the differences between facilities. … Standards become those ‘eyes’ that are always on.”
TRSA unveils certification for laundries serving food manufacturing/processing textiles, TRSA says. The new food safety program was developed from Hygienically Clean for Healthcare, a program introduced in 2013. “Hygienically Clean provides a quantitative measure that ensures ongoing adherence to best practices and outcomes based on internationally recognized, proven and accepted testing for bio-contamination,” Ricci says, emphasizing that TRSA does not mandate laundry practices, but evaluates the effectiveness of a laundry’s ALN chosen techniques.
The Newspaper of Record for Laundry & Linen Management
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[12] PRODUCT
La Quinta, Standard Textile partner to set new world records
Setting production standards to improve your bottom line
SHOWCASE
Late News
COUNTING, MEASURING & MONITORING SYSTEMS
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OPL 101: Benefits of Multi-Par System
Bill Brooks: Rotating three sets of linen through a cycle helps make hotel housekeepers more efficient, preserves linen.
3/24/14 8:40 AM