Keyword or Search: <% Dim MyValue2 Randomize MyValue2 = Int((6 * Rnd) + 1) Set Conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Conn.Open Session("trsa_ConnectionString2") MySQL = "Select * From HouseAds Where HouseAdID Like '%" & MyValue2 & "%' " Set Conn = Conn.Execute(MySQL) %> "> " alt="" width=130 height=85 border=1 align=top> <% conn.close %>	Service Control's new Las Vegas plant A look inside "the world's largest linen plant." By Clyde E. Blaco Billed as the world's largest linen plant, Western Linen's new North Las Vegas plant, a division of Service Control, is predicted to process more laundry under one roof than any other privately owned operation in the world. Instrumental in building the new plant: Service Control Executive Vice President David Eisenberg who was responsible for the overall project. Eisenberg recently spoke with TRSA staffer Clyde Blaco about the challenges involved in building one of the world's largest laundries. Clyde Blaco: How much did this plant cost? David Eisenberg: With the land, building, and additional equipment, in the neighborhood of $14 million. Blaco: Given the enormous expenditures required, why did Service Control decide to build a new plant? Eisenberg: Quite simply, we needed more room. Las Vegas is undergoing a tremendous building boom. In 1990 the number of available hotel rooms is scheduled to increase by 20 to 25 percent. This expansion is certain. Projects on the drawing board could add another 20 percent easily. So, Service Control was faced with the situation of how it could serve the increased needs of its customers. The old plant had been expanded twice. Not only that, we were taking advantage of outside space as well. We were using about 20,000 square feet outside the plant. Incoming soiled items were being unloaded and stored outside of the plant in the yard — we were really jammed! And even if we could have added on the old plant, the work-flow we would've achieved wasn't very efficient. Faced with several options — expanding the old plant, building a satellite plant or building a new plant — we decided the best decision was to build new. The choices were complicated by the fact a very large part of the expansion in the marketplace was coming from two of our existing customers — Circus, Circus and the Golden Nugget. The Circus, Circus Corp. was planning to build Excalibur. Circus now has about 2,800 rooms; the proposed Excalibur is to have a little over 4,000. We also serve the Golden Nugget, which has about 1,800 rooms and is building the Mirage with 3,300 rooms. These customers made it clear that if we were n prepared to serve the new properties, we would lose the old ones. So, we were faced with the fact of servicing the expansion or losing a substantial piece of business, to the tune of 4,600 hotel rooms. Blaco: Do you have a contract with the Mirage and Excalibur? Eisenberg: We have a contract with both. We did not begin building the new plant until we had a contract with the Mirage and a verbal commitment with the Excalibur. Blaco: How far ahead of project completion will a hotel enter into a contract? Eisenberg: Because linen is a major concern, hotels begin negotiating the contract almost a year in advance of opening There's a lot of time and trouble in getting the final, formal contract. Such a contract has to go through the hotel's legal department, which can be very slow. But we agreed on a con tract about a year and a half in advance. Blaco: What percentage of businesses in Las Vegas have on-premise laundries (OPLs)? Eisenberg: The last survey we did showed that some 60 percent of the businesses contacted in Las Vegas use rental and 40 percent use OPLs. With the new construction, it is now somewhere near 65 percent rental and 35 percent OPL Blaco: What's the breakdown at this plant of commercial laundering (NOG or COG) versus linen rental service? Eisenberg: The plant is virtually all rental. The only exceptions are some of the fine garments that go to the hotels -- spreads that we dry-clean for them, and just a few special items. Blaco: So, as far as lotting, a towel is a towel? Eisenberg: No, we have the ability to lot our major customers In fact, we have the ability to lot them all, but the lot might be whole group of smaller hotels. Blaco: How many garments do you process? Eisenberg: About 75,000 garments a week. Blaco: What do you process in the fine finishing department? Eisenberg: We do casino uniforms and dry-clean table skirts, some spreads, and some drapes. Blaco: One of your earlier press releases said, "When we open the new plant, it will process two million pounds per week; half a million pounds more than our present capacity." Were you doing about 1.5 million pounds per week at the old facilities? Eisenberg: No, we were doing about 1.2 to 1.3 million. We had a capacity at peak of up to about 1.5 million. In other words, we didn't do it every week. Blaco: How much of your rated capacity or plant capacity is for future expansion? Eisenberg: We expect to be doing about 2 million pounds a week by next summer — somewhere between 1.8 and 2 million. The present plant might take some additional equipment, but it's built to do about 2.6 million pounds. We can expand 30 percent without any problem. Blaco: In regard to the outside storage that you mentioned, don't you have problems in freezing weather? Eisenberg: No, we are insulating the hot water and tempered water tanks and the water lines, but the weather is never bad enough to cause problems. We might get a freeze at night, but we operate two shifts. The weather has never prohibited us From using space outside the building. Blaco: It's deceiving when you state the size of your plant. In other regions water tanks and water softeners take up a lot of square footage. Eisenberg: We felt that those services could be kept outside he plant against the wall. Even in the old plant, the heat-exchange system was outside. The pipes from the softeners to the heat exchanger to the tempered water tank are all stainless steel Blaco: Why did you use stainless steel? Eisenberg: We wanted to be sure that we weren't going to be faced with rust in the water or corrosion in the lines. Copper was out of the question because of cost. However, we felt that the cost of using stainless instead of cast iron piping could be recouped in the next few years in terms of better water quality and less maintenance. We built this plant to last. We could have built it more cheaply, but we were trying to look at not just me initial but the long-term costs. Blaco: What's the expected life of the plant? Eisenberg: Obviously, it's tied in with the economy in Las Vegas, changes in technology, and so forth. The building itself and the basic water system in the building should easily last 40 years because the building is all metal, is solidly constructed, and has a good concrete base. Obviously, if the technology changes, we'll have to make some changes overall. I don't see why the building won't last longer than 40 years. Blaco: The old plant was in the city of Las Vegas and the new plant is in North Las Vegas. Are they separate cities? Eisenberg: Yes. North Las Vegas is a separate municipality. Blaco: Other than just finding a piece of land large enough, were there any other considerations for changing municipalities? Eisenberg: No, the main reason was the land requirement. We didn't really care about changing municipalities, it just worked out that way. The piece of land that we needed was in North Las Vegas, which is not unusual because as you go further south into Las Vegas, land becomes more and more expensive. Blaco: Did you have to file an environmental impact statement to build this plant? Eisenberg: Fortunately no, there was a lot of paperwork but nothing dramatic. Blaco: You took a chunk of raw desert and built a plant so you didn't have any hidden, leaky tanks, or those types of problems to contend with. You also kept everything above ground. Eisenberg: We decided to stay completely away from underground tanks. The only tank we have is the fuel oil tank as a backup to the boiler and that is built above ground with a containing wall. We decided not to put in a gasoline tank. It was an economic decision based on problems we and others have had. We feel it is cheaper to pay a slight premium for gasoline now from an outside dealer than to have the future risk of having to clean up a problem tank. Blaco: Were there any "close calls" while you were building the plant? Eisenberg: After the grand opening of the plant, I went back in one night to check production and security. And, Loa and behold, a fire truck was sitting outside the plant, people were scurrying around, and immediately I thought that the plant we had spent a year building was burning down. It turned out to be only an overly sensitive heat sensor. Was I relieved! Blaco: I didn't see your truck maintenance area. About how large is it? Do you have a machine shop there? Eisenberg: Yes, we have a 3,400- or 3,500-square-foot maintenance area. And we have a machine shop for making parts and rebuilding equipment. Blaco: Do you have a mill, a lathe, a drill press, and that type of equipment? Eisenberg: Not only that, but we also have a bridge crane which spans the whole thing so we can handle large equipment as well as lift motors. Blaco: How many tractor trailers or trucks run out of your plant and do you service any depots? Eisenberg: At the present time we do not serve any depots or remote locations. We're running eight tractor trailers with hotel work. Those eight generally run around the clock. They go back and forth making up to five trips to one hotel in a day. We're running about 15 smaller route trucks also. Blaco: What type of automation systems are integrated into the plant? Eisenberg: We have three separate product lines going through the plant and they are kept completely separate. Each product has its own soilroom, washroom, and finishing area. The greatest poundage is the room linen: terry towels, sheets, pillowcases, and so forth. To handle these items, we put in a material handling system. Once the linens are separated, the pillowcases and sheets go to the ironers. No hands touch the terry towels from the time they are separated at the soil-sorting platform until they reach their destination for finishing There's an automatic system on the soil side that take loads from the separating platform to a storage rail by computer. Next a computer takes the load to one of five tunnel washers. There's a clean-side handling system from the tunnel washers that automatically picks up the cakes of sheet breaks them up, and transports the load to the ironers. On the terry side are two tunnel washers. Each one has its own battery of tumblers and a shuttle conveyor to transfer the work to the tumblers. Blaco: You had 10 tumblers there, is that tight? Eisenberg: Yes, 10 tumblers for terry. We have 16 in the plant — 14 gas tumblers and two steam tumblers — not counting small equipment. Ten are devoted to terry and conditioning pillowcases. They dump onto a belt conveyor that feeds into an air conveying system. The air conveying system is designed to drop the pillowcases, for example, at stations in front of the pillowcase ironers and the terry towels at the correct folding stations. The tunnels all have a single-stage, automatic extractor. The sheets are not conditioned. The cakes are broken up and they go directly to the ironers. We put in three of the new European-style, large, four-roll ironers, and we're converting to spreader/feeders for all of our sheet ironers. The computer system located in a control room on the plant floor operates the material handling system and tracks everything to the finishing end of the belt where it's tied. Blaco: Were you and Harry Ward (engineering consultant) talking about stackers between the ironers? Eisenberg: Yes, we have left room for automatic stackers to be added later that will put ironed, folded sheets on the belt automatically. We left room but did not put them in now because we didn't want to do everything in one shot. Blaco: How much of the existing equipment was converted, unchanged, or brought from the other plant? Eisenberg: Whatever we could. For example, this plant will have five tunnels. There are four in now-, the fifth one is at the old plant. Two tunnel washers came from the old plant. The washroom for table linen has four self-dump washers from the old plant along with two centrifugal extractors. Seven ironers, the steam tunnel, a number of individual presses, the two boilers and one of the heat-exchange systems also came from the old plant. Blaco: What size are the boilers? Eisenberg: The main boiler is 1,014 horsepower (hp) and the backup boiler is about 650 hp. The backup boiler is completely adequate now because in the new plant we have a direct-fired, gas hot-water heater. In the old plant the boiler heated the water. Blaco: What is your hot water production capacity and at what temperature? Eisenberg: We will be doing about 500,000 gallons a day. We keep our hot water at 160 degrees Fahrenheit and our tempered water will be between 100 degrees and 110 degrees Fahrenheit. We have two heat-exchange systems — one will handle the tempered water and one will handle the hot water. That will primarily come from the conventional washrooms. Blaco: Do you have a wastewater pit? Eisenberg: Yes. Where you saw the heat-exchange system, that concrete pad covers the wastewater pit. It's quite large. Blaco: Is water readily available? Eisenberg: Yes. We don't have any problem getting water. Blaco: Is there any need to conserve water? Eisenberg: The only need is cost. We do everything that we can, but there is no limit on how much water we can use. Blaco: What prompted you to put in an air-handling system tem for this large of a plant? Was it to attract new employees or keep existing employees? Eisenberg: The answer is a bit of everything. First of all, you have to provide cool air in a climate like Las Vegas. You'd have to be here in the summertime to know what I'm talking about The temperature can rise to 100 degrees easily. Las Vegas is a little cooler than Phoenix, but last year Phoenix had over 160 days of 100-degree-plus temperatures. In a laundry it's hotter than that. The old plant provided cooling through individual evaporative coolers. We had 60 of them at the old plant. The horsepower we have here is the same as we had at the old plant, but with a much larger, integrated system. Sixty of those evaporative coolers on the roof represent several problems. One is that they vibrate and have a tendency to cause leaks in the root There is also a problem with maintenance. When we were operating last summer, it was almost a man and a half job just to keep them maintained. The decision was costly, but we felt we absolutely had to have a method of air handling. We decided on this particular system because it met all the criteria. It can operate at various speeds and provide the cool air necessary based on outside temperatures. Employee comfort and productivity were important considerations. Another consideration was the labor market in Las Vegas. It is very competitive. We want to make working conditions as pleasant as possible so we can attract and hold people. So it's a combination of all of these things. The real decision was which system. After much deliberation, we felt an evaporative cooling system with a pre-cooler was the best choice. Blaco: Do you use a return air system? Eisenberg: No. Blaco: So everything that goes in cool gets wasted? Why? Eisenberg: Because it's an evaporative cooler, not a conventional system. In other words, it cools by running air through a film of water. The cooling effect is achieved by evaporating the water. This type of cooler can't be used if there's high humidity. It must operate under low humidity conditions. If you tried to return the air and recycle it, you'd build up the humidity and the process becomes less effective. Blaco: Tell me about the chemical supply room. Eisenberg: We have a full-time technician that makes up the chemical supply solutions. He makes sure there's enough chemical in the storage tanks. He mixes solutions at ground level and then pumps them up to the storage tanks above. The supplies are fed via gravitational pull to computer-controlled pumps and individual meters that disperse chemicals according to the various wash formulas. Blaco: Do the machine operators on the manual washers and washer/extractors hand feed any supplies? Eisenberg: The only places where supplies are hand-fed are the pony washers in the garment department or the small washer/extractor for rewash and small loads. Blaco: Is your soil-sorting system tied to a computer and do you generate your billing from the soil count or the dean count? Eisenberg: That's tricky to answer! The reason is we have three soil counting systems. The room linen billing is generated from the clean shipment, not the count. It's a complicated thing because the type of trade in Las Vegas is similar to some of the hospital plants, but basically we have our own inventory people at most of these hotels. The large ones have a person full-time; the small ones are handled by a rover. Our inventory people and the housekeeper put the orders together and our billing is generated from those orders. Our sorting and weighing is to make sure that we're actually sending out what we get in. We're switching to computerized systems for table linen and garments, and billing will be generated from the soil side. Blaco: Do you have large loss charges from people that take "souvenirs" from Las Vegas? Eisenberg: No, the greatest loss charges are on table linen and garments. Blaco: What special communications problems do you anticipate in a plant of this size: Eisenberg: Not too many, but it's difficult to say what the future holds. We have a good internal telephone and paging system. Some of our key employees wear beepers so they are to be reached easily. Blaco: What type of quality control system do you have now? Eisenberg: In the past, we relied on some of the statistic techniques. It was the plant manager's responsibility to o bundles, check rejects, and so forth. Employees are trained to reject work that is substandard. We now have a full-time quality control inspector responsible for the whole plant. Quality control is his function, but the production people are ultimately responsible for quality. Blaco: What levels of supervision are at this plant? Eisenberg: We're in a transition period. Under Miguel Montenegro, the production manager, was a shift manager on each shift. Under the shift manager were area supervisors. Now, because we are able to separate goods into three separate flow lines, we're working with the concept of using a production manager for each flow line. Each production manager has as many supervisors as required for that flow line. We think it will work, but we're in the middle of putting it together. Blaco: What percentage of the plant's production does each of the three flow lines represent? Eisenberg: The room linen line is about 75 percent. The table linen line, and odds and ends that go with it, is about 15 percent. The garment part is about 10 percent, but we expect that to increase. Blaco: Other than the air-handling system, what other features are for the employees' comfort and benefit? Eisenberg: We have what we consider first-class restrooms for our employees. They are tiled and equipped with lockers and showers. We have a conference room on the plant floor level for training and for production supervisors to meet. That room will be set up with some audiovisual training equipment. It's also a first-aid room. We have a large lunch room with doors that open out to an enclosed terrace. So, in nice weather the employees can eat outdoors if they want and yet stay within the plant. There's a large variety of vending machines. The lunch room is large and airy and we're going to keep it pleasant. Blaco: Do you have any language problems? Eisenberg: No. A large number of the employees are Hispanic, but our plant manager, Miguel, is Hispanic and completely bilingual, as is a number of our supervision staff. Blaco: Do you have any problems securing labor? Eisenberg: No. When we decided to build the plant, we did a survey. We found that roughly a third of the present employees live in this area. A third live near the old plant. And a third are scattered in other areas. Blaco: How many employees are at the plant? Eisenberg: A total of 425 to 450 at the moment. Blaco: Are you running two shifts? Eisenberg: We're running two shifts, seven days a week. Blaco: How many production people or what kind of a breakdown do you have between production, route, service, and administration? Eisenberg: Roughly, we have about 335 employees in direct production and about another 90 involved in delivery, service, supervision, and office.