One of the biggest wastes of production labor dollars is idle (i.e., nonproductive) time. We old-timers call this “daywork.” A new term is “gap time.” One of a laundry’s key production performance measures is to identify and control this idle time. Our goal is to keep this idle (wasteful) time to 5% or less of our production payroll time (hours). It sounds simple. However, we have heard executives say, “This is like chasing ghosts.”

CROSS-TRAINING EXTENDS STAFF CAPABILITIES

The best way to combat this idle time is cross-training. Here is an absolute: Everyone in your production operation should have ...