TRSA kicked off its Regional Production Summit and Plant Tour series on Jan. 24-25 in Las Vegas. The summits aim to make industry-specific educational content and networking opportunities accessible to all members by rotating throughout different regions of the U.S.
The first program was designed for members located on the West Coast. The two-day summit kicked off with a keynote session from Nancy Roberts, CEO & founder of The DISC Wizard. Roberts discussed emotional intelligence (EQ), the five traits of emotionally intelligent people and how attendees could use this knowledge to become more effective leaders. Prior to her presentation, Roberts gave attendees the option to complete an EQ evaluation. She then implemented how the audience scored into the presentation to provide a key takeaway for attendees.
Roberts was followed by a presentation from Todd Leeth, strategic growth leader at Spindle, which focused on a production manager’s role in preventive maintenance. In this session, audience members learned how to save labor and energy costs by scheduling preventive maintenance during normal working hours. They also were given real-life examples of how preventive maintenance has been overlooked in different areas of a laundry and how that has impacted operations. Finally, Leeth stressed the importance of scheduled meetings between production and maintenance staff members to improve communication, and keep an organization flowing effectively and safely.
Next up was Don Bock, an industry consultant, who gave a presentation titled “Fire Safety – Strategies for Prevention.” Bock delivered a comprehensive report on common sources of fire in a laundry and the best strategies to prevent them. He also gave an explanation of different fire suppression systems a laundry may use.
Christopher Stammer, CEO of Volu Interactive, then took to the stage to give a presentation on leadership skills and challenging the audience to consider whether they conduct themselves as captain or crew. A U.S. Coast Guard licensed Master Captain and “aspiring professional sailor,” Stammer used real-world examples where ship captains have found themselves in catastrophic circumstances by not making informed decisions that a captain should have considered to avoid disaster. Stammer led the audience through an exercise where they ranked a number of survival items that may be provided in a ship wreck in order of importance for survival. This thought exercise was used to illustrate the importance of collaboration while avoiding “group-think” in decision making as a leader. Stammer ended with tips on how to decipher your team’s individual desires and align those desires with incentives to maximize the performance of an organization.
Keith Ware, an industry consultant, followed Stammer with a presentation on process improvement and root-cause analysis. Ware began by explaining the basics of root-cause analysis. He then stressed the importance of thinking outside of the box when problem solving and building a team that is collaborative to streamline process improvement. To illustrate this point, Ware broke the audience up into groups and challenged them to build the highest structure out of marshmallows, dry spaghetti and pipe cleaners in five minutes. Following Ware’s presentation, the audience was able to contribute to facilitated roundtables to discuss common issues and collaborate on strategies to improve. Topics included regional issues, fire safety, production scheduling and leadership development.
The first day closed with a panel discussion featuring Daniel Como, the regional vice president of UniFirst Corp.; and Barrett Gamble, the general manager of Alsco Uniforms, Las Vegas. The panel discussion, which was facilitated by Joseph Ricci, president and CEO of TRSA, provided a forum for the two executives to give answers on how they see their roles in providing support for production in their organizations, as well as share their personal approaches to achieving goals to drive the organization forward. A robust question-and-answer session was held to close the session, providing attendees the opportunity to interact with the panelists and get answers to issues impacting their facilities.
On the second and final day of the summit, Gamble opened the doors of Alsco Uniform’s Las Vegas facility to give attendees a plant tour. This location spans 88,000 square feet and employs 121 individuals. It processes 315,000 pounds of laundry per week using a variety of washers and dryers, including seven side-load washers (900 lb.), two pony washers and two front-load washers (450 lb.). The facility also has three CLM tumble dryers, two Ellis WHISPERDRYers, and one pony dryer. Attendees also saw the Blanket Blaster, a machine by Chicago Dryer that takes large pieces of flatwork in and neatly folds them into a package at a rate of 800 units per hour. During the tour, attendees were broken up into groups and led through various areas of the plant, including a unique stock room that supplies over 20 other Alsco locations.
The second program in this series will be held on May 1-2 in Milwaukee, WI, in collaboration with the Wisconsin Association of Textile Services (WATS) for members in the Midwest region. Click here to learn more and register for the Midwest Summit.
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