JUNE 2017
Late News Alliance to end IPSO® equipment sales in North America RIPON, Wis. — Alliance Laundry Systems will discontinue sales and marketing of IPSO®branded laundry equipment in the United States and Canada, beginning in April 2018, the company reports. The move will not impact sales of the brand outside of North America. “This decision, while difficult for our IPSO distributors, was one we felt is necessary for our total distribution network and Alliance Laundry Systems moving forward,” says William Bittner, vice president North American sales for Alliance Laundry Systems. “Rationalization of our brands within our North American portfolio was the primary driver behind the move.” Alliance says it will continue to support IPSO products through its Customer One® organization, offering parts access and its commercial laundry technical support team. IPSO commercial products for on-premises and vended laundries are currently sold in the United States and Canada through 64 distributors, the company says. Over the next year, Alliance says it will work closely with these distributors to help them prepare for the ALN discontinuation.
Volume 43, Number 6
HEALTHCARE LAUNDRY:
Search for continual improvement Experts explore five challenges facing the industry, strategies to overcome
BY MATT POE, EDITOR CHICAGO — Healthcare laundries face a multitude of issues that impact both patient health and their own business. Case in point, the recent wrongful death lawsuits against Paris Cos. and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Several families of patients with serious diseases or undergoing transplants sued both the laundry and the hospital because the patients died after apparently contracting moldrelated infections from tainted bed linens. The lawsuits are ongoing, but the issues facing Paris Cos. are ones every healthcare laundry must face and address: infection control and linen security. Other challenges that healthcare laun-
dries face are sustainability, competition from disposables, and cost management. In order to deal with these issues, experts say healthcare laundries must continually grow and change. “The impact (of these issues) is to see this as an opportunity to make our companies better, stronger and more valuable to the customer as a partner,” says David Potack, senior vice president of Unitex, a healthcare uniform and linen rental provider. Laundries competing in healthcare will need to be more professional in their operations by improving employee training, developing stronger management and providing skilled understandSee HEALTHCARE on Page 6
Kansas hospital goes OPL after 50-plus years Cuts $350,000 a year with in-house laundry HOISINGTON, Kan. — After outsourcing hospital laundry since 1950, Clara Barton Hospital, located here, brought laundry processing in-house for a $350,000 drop in annual costs, according to the hospital. “I knew we were getting gouged, but I had no idea by how much,” says Clara Barton Hospital CEO Jim Blackwell. “The results were beyond my wildest dreams.” Blackwell, who says he was frustrated by the linen service’s cost and quality, studied the
laundry process for several years before diving in. “We just didn’t have any square footage internally to take it in-house without adding bricks and mortar,” he says. In 2013, that changed. Clara Barton Hospital added a new physical therapy wing, and with the expanded square footage, added an on-premises laundry (OPL). Blackwell says he worked in concert on the project with the hospital’s architect and Brian Asher of Commercial Laundry Sales & Service (CLS&S) in Wichita, Kan. “The hospital had been paying a linen company in the neighborhood of $3 per pound,” says Asher. “We forecasted that by
bringing the laundry in-house, their cost of doing laundry would drop to 55 cents per pound, which included the cost of labor, utilities, equipment, financing, linen replacement and chemicals.” Asher says he installed Continental soft-mount washers and dryers to ensure low utilities, maximized throughput, advanced programmability and ease of use. The hospital says one laundry operator uses the equipment to process 11,000 pounds of laundry per month. The soft-mount E-Series Washers (one 55-, one 30- and one 20-pound-capacity model) are freestanding, feature a flexible control and generate high-
www.americanlaundrynews.com
INSIDE Embracing Change Eric Frederick shares his thoughts on how operators can accept change.
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Infection control and linen security are among the healthcare laundry industry’s top challenges. (Image licensed by Ingram Publishing)
extract speeds up to 387 G-force, Asher says. Three Continental Pro-Series II Dryers (two 35- and one 55-pound-capacity models) round out the equipment mix. “We could have poured a thicker concrete pad to accommodate hard-mount washers, but it made sense to go with the soft-mount washers for ease of installation, higher G-force extract speeds, and maximized productivity, efficiency and labor savings,” he says. According to Asher, softmount washers remove considerably more moisture from laundry during extract, so laundry dries in significantly less time. See CLARA on Page 10
The Newspaper of Record for Laundry & Linen Management
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Laundry Worker PPE The PPE laundry employees should wear depend on the operation.
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Panel of Experts
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Our experts discuss finding good employees in the marketplace.
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