Episode 64 – Automation and Innovation

Welcome to the TRSA podcast. Providing interviews and insights from the linen, uniform, and facility services industry. Most Americans might not realize it, but they benefit at least once per week from the cleanliness and safety of laundered, reusable linens, uniforms, towels, mats, and other products provided by various businesses and organizations. TRSA represents the companies that supply, launder, and maintain linens and uniforms. And in this podcast, we will bring the thought leaders of the industry to you.

 

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Linen Uniform and Facility Services podcast, interviews and insights by TRSA. I’m your host, Jason Risley. On today’s episode, Mark Bojack, the president of Clean Uniforms and More, a 3rd generation family owned industrial operator located in New Bedford, Massachusetts, joins us to discuss the company’s growth as well as several innovations at its facility, including its RFID system to track garments, as well as its recently installed automated soil sorting system. Mark, thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a little bit about, clean uniforms and more?

 

So just how long has the company been around? Good afternoon, Jason. Thanks for having me. History, I’ll give you the condensed version. We’re not sure if we started in 1919 or 1920 On January 1st, my grandfather at the end of World War 2 came over from Poland, was supposed to have a job in Newmarket, New Hampshire, showed up at the address, and they told him they had no job, didn’t know who he was.

 

When growing up in Poland, he was taught to be a mason and a weaver. So he had heard of a city called New Bedford in Massachusetts. So he made his way down to New Bedford with nobody to sponsor him. Went down there, Heard it was a great textile city. Got a job as a sample weaver, which at that time was one of the higher paying jobs.

 

All the textiles were being sold in New York. A sketch would come up from the city. He would have to work all night. Whoever could get the sketch there first had a better chance at winning the business. So that went on for a little while, then he ended up in partnership in a dry goods store.

 

And with a partner, that didn’t work out too well for him, but he used to say he would look out the front door and he would see a laundry cart with a horse, and it looked like the poor horse couldn’t even get it up the hill. So we thought it’d be a good idea to go into the laundry business. He got a loan from a doctor Perez, $10,000, built his own shop. Doctor Perez was his first sales salesman as that they went to houses then, and off it went from there. It was all home laundry.

 

My dad got involved after World War 2, then he got called up for career, came back after career. And the home laundry business was fading away fast. We got into dry cleaning coin ops, and that went on through the 50s, 60s, 70s, somewhere around 1980. We got rid of everything but the industrial that we had. So we’ve truly been industrial since 1980.

 

Had my grandfather’s original shop, outgrew that, bought another laundry within New Bedford, outgrew that. In the nineties, the big push was on for wastewater, and both shops were in residential neighborhoods. No way to expand. And we had we started buying houses around the shop. That didn’t work out.

 

And the shop we’re currently in now the facility. There was some land available. It was an old lumber yard, about 5 acres of land, only about 3 streets from where my grandfather started. So we bought that in 96, opened up in 99, and since then have added a couple depots, one in New Hampshire, one in Connecticut. And we have plenty of room to grow in this current facility.

 

We just went through a major retrofit with a lot of new equipment. So you moved into the current main plant location in 1999, you said? Yes. And now at that time, how much additional floor space did you have for expansion? At that time, over the course of design, we added square footage because we were, at one time, based in 4 buildings, so there was a lot of wasted space.

 

So we probably came out with the same square footage between the 4 locations that we had when we put it under one roof. And since then, you’ve added additional locations or some depots, you said? 2 depots. 1 in New Hampshire and one in Connecticut. Let’s talk some about, your RFID.

 

How long have you had RFID, and then what, textile types are you using it for? We started shipping in 2015. When we built the plant, we were barcoded. We had one of the original IPC systems for automatic sorting. Worked out well for us.

 

But as it was aging, it was getting tougher to keep it running. So we were looking at systems, and we knew we had to go to RFID at that time. So we started on 215, 2000 17, we put in, we replaced the IPC system with, Jensen Metricon system. We also replaced the 2 years later, the stockroom was automated with a new Jensen system that used to be IPC. So the move was really made in conjunction with those 2 to get everything onto chips for better tracking.

 

It made the sorting easier. Really had some benefits internally for production. Can you talk some about your proprietary reporting system? Yeah. That was, developed with originally IPC.

 

Then before IPC, we had our own in house software. We were gonna go to IPC when we went with the sorting system, but we decided to keep it in house. So it was a combination of the information you could glean from an automatic sort system with the barcodes to getting it to the customer, you know, the touch points that you had on it, more reliable deliveries, and definitely a better sort. How do customers access their information or reports? Right now on request, we just emailed them to them.

 

We’re going through a another rewrite of our route accounting system that will let customers come in and access it anytime they’d like. Now for a brief message from TRSA. Laundries are certified hygienically cleaned through third party inspection and quarterly testing that quantifies an established threshold of pathogens on textiles to levels that pose no threat of illness. Inspectors also verify employee training, safety standard compliance, and operational efficiencies. Certified laundries must maintain a quality assurance or QA manual that indicates their management, housekeeping, and training practices comply with the hygienically clean standard.

 

Now back to the episode. And what do you see as the, benefits of barcoding versus RFID? The RFID, that really played a bigger part when we came into adding the Impechex system that really makes the system by having the Impechex system doing your automatic soil sort with Barco. It simply wouldn’t have been as fast or as hands off. And when did you first learn about automated, separation, the picking and feeding?

 

Yeah. That was interesting. Had to be somewhere between 17/19, probably Janssen hosted a meeting in Mallorca, Spain, and we originally went over. They had presented, or I had heard about something that, for lack of a better word, they referred to as the MAT Hotel. It was an automated storage input output system for MATs, and that’s what I really went over to my orca to see.

 

And while in my orca, they had just started with Imbatec, and they had that system set up there. And that just seemed really interesting compared to the amount of handling you do with mats versus garments that we could get a better payback. Although, I still would like to have the mat hotel. And what features did you evaluate for the production line that went with the separator such as the camera and X-ray? Yeah.

 

I think that with the availability of the chip on the garments between the X-ray and the camera, you know, you get a great sort. Good for the customers. If we find anything, we know exactly who it came from versus finding it after the fact. It automatically kicks out anything that doesn’t look right, and that’s been getting better as the AI catches up with what is okay to let by and what we want thrown out. You get a great sort.

 

We haven’t had one problem with a pen since we put it in. So we’ve had no rewash for ink on that end. The things we’ve gotten back to the customer, of course, they appreciate it. And it was a big savings with, route service people that we could put more volume on their routes because they were no longer sorting clothes. Were there certain textile types that you first considered using the line for?

 

Like, was it always industrial garments, or were you considering bulk items as well? Yeah. We’re pretty much a 100% industrial, so it was always intended just for garments. And what prompted you to move forward with the configuration that you ended up selecting? Well, I think everybody realizes labor is the cost of labor is going nowhere but up.

 

And being in Massachusetts, it’s probably going up more so. So it was really driven by the labor market. What’s what’s going on with that that we need to get better people, pay them better. And one way to do that is automate. And when did the configuration fully operate, and why did it get up and running on that date?

 

Yeah. It was a little longer than we expected. I think we signed in the beginning of 2020. Then with the onset of COVID, we got delayed with shipping. We got delayed with contractors.

 

Janssen had problem getting people out of Europe to get here. But we made it through when we got it going Q1 of 2021. You talked about some of the challenges with COVID. Was there anything else that challenged you in bringing the system up to speed? When it first started, there was a a few problems because being a 100% industrial, I think we were a little dirtier than what they were used to handling.

 

So we had to go through, some change outs with some sensors and a couple other things, and they they figured it out and got it done. Can you describe the optimal, throughput requirements? For example, if the separator is really full, does it slow down or bottleneck at all? No. It runs pretty much the same all the time.

 

We built a mezzanine for it. You could run it at 1500 pieces per hour. We toned it down just a little bit to keep it from banging so much, but we do have 2 of them, so it keeps up with everything fine. And how do you assure that the system doesn’t back up? It’s we’re under capacity with it right now, but with 2 of them at 1400, 1500 an hour, that would take the whole washroom at any one time.

 

So we have a pretty decent, margin of error. So with those 2, you have plenty of capacity? Absolutely. And what are your, key performance indicators that the system is paying off for you? Well, with COVID, I think that got a little bit of scale out of it because wages really exploded in that year or 18 month period.

 

So using just safe wages as a KPI wouldn’t do it, but it did cut down on personnel where we needed it. It did did meet the KPIs there. Have you met or exceeded your goals for labor costs or full time employee reduction? Yes. On that end, yeah, it did perform with the full time employee reduction that we were looking for.

 

How about, total pieces or pounds achieved per hour? It’s operating as advertised. Is there anything else you wanna add about how the system has benefited your operation? No. It’s made it a lot easier for people on the soil side, not having to handle everything as much.

 

Just put it on a conveyor, and that’s it. So, you know, hopefully, in the long run, it’ll help us definitely with the wage savings, get wages up. We like to pass that back to the people and be able to attract better people. Hey, Mark. That was my last question.

 

Thanks so much for sharing your insights with us today. I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you, Jason. Today’s episode featured an interview that was included in a recent TRSA webinar titled Machines More Like People and People More Like Machines, that originally aired on November 2, 2023.

 

To listen to the full presentation, visit TRSA’s on demand learning center at www.trsa.org/ondemand. Access to the on demand learning center is free for TRSA members. Thanks again for tuning in. And if you liked what you heard on today’s show, please subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Itunes and Google Podcasts. For the latest news and information from the linen, uniform and facility services industry, subscribe to our newsletter, Textile Services Weekly, and our monthly print publication, Textile Services Magazine.

 

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