What does the future of laundry look like? For 200 TRSA members who registered for The Potential of Automation – A Virtual Laundry Tour, the answer came in the form of robotic sorting arms, AI-powered cameras and smart conveyors working together inside Nor Tekstil’s Berger plant outside Oslo, Norway. The webinar on Sept. 25, hosted by JENSEN and Inwatec, gave participants a chance to see automation in action and consider how similar systems might strengthen their own operations.
The program featured an expert panel of speakers:
- Patrick Gittard, marketing manager, JENSEN USA
- Lars Borg, sales manager, JENSEN Norway
- Simon Omme, regional sales manager, Inwatec
- Justin Bennett, automation product specialist, JENSEN USA
Together, they highlighted how automation is reshaping laundry workflows from intake to pack-out. On the soil side, attendees saw how automated separation and camera-based classification help plants sort mixed hotel linen quickly and consistently – reducing manual touchpoints and supporting better flow to the wash aisle. On the clean side, finishing lines can be tied to an automated buffer that feeds stacks to pack-out on demand, centralizing the final steps, improving organization, and supporting accuracy by article and size.
Speaker highlights included:
- What automation solves: labor scarcity, ergonomic strain and variability that limits throughput and consistency.
- Why it’s feasible now: proven robotics, smarter sensors, and software and modular designs that let plants scale over time.
- Operator impact: rather than replacing core roles, automation can shift team members to higher-value tasks and reduce reliance on temporary labor.
During a Q&A session, panelists addressed how systems are trained to recognize different items, how accuracy is achieved across look-alike textiles and what maintenance routines look like. Presenters emphasized that plants can begin with focused use cases – such as soil sorting or stacked-item buffering – and expand gradually as benefits become clear.
For TRSA members, the lesson was straightforward: automation is no longer experimental. It is a set of practical tools that can raise productivity, consistency and employee safety while allowing laundries to focus staff on higher-value work.
TRSA thanks JENSEN, Inwatec and Nor Tekstil for opening the “virtual doors” and sharing practical lessons from the floor. For members considering how automation might fit into their own operations, the virtual tour offered not just a glimpse of the future – but practical insight into what’s possible today.
A recording of the Sept. 25 will be available soon in TRSA’s On-Demand Learning Center.
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