Cross Training – A Key Ingredient to Production Optimization

One of the biggest wastes of Production labor dollars is Idle (Non-Productive) time.?Us Old-timers call this Daywork. ?A new term is Gap time.??One of the Laundry’s Production Key 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 state, “This is like chasing Ghosts”.

The best way of combating this Idle time is Cross-Training.?Here is an absolute.?Everyone in our Production operation should have some form of Cross-Training.?We normally break down our laundry operation into four departments:?Soil, Washroom, Finishing, and Pack Out.?Each of these departments have key employees that work their entire workday at various jobs/tasks in these departments.?The question is how much (if any) idle time do they have.?Here are some examples of how Cross Training can help our normal production operations.

Our first example of Cross Training is the scheduling of Products processing through our plant.?Every laundry has a schedule of products through the Soil department, then into our Washroom, then into our Finishing (Garment Tunnel, Ironers, Folders, Mat Rollers), and finally into our Pack Out/Load Building department.?One laundry we work with has 24 hours of Soil Sorting each day, however, they have 4 employees.?Math tells us we only have 6 hours of Soil Workstation time using 4 employees.?The last 2 hours of these 4 Soil Sort employees (who are cross trained) workday is scheduled to Hand Fold finished products.

An important aspect of Production is that we are scheduling work for 2-hour increments for our Soil-Wash-Finishing-Pack Out departments.?Our Soil team is finished sorting soil 2 hours before our Washroom is done for the day.?We should have a Production schedule for every day.?Cross Training helps fill in the gaps for this production schedule.

A second example of Cross Training involves our Washroom team.?The Washroom employee’s primary goal is to turn (unload and reload) our washers in a specified period.?What is our washroom group doing when all of their washers and dryers are processing products??Hopefully, they are planning for upcoming wash loads.?However, when time allows, we have some washroom departments cross trained to stage/prep large pieces for our ironer teams during any open time they have.?A washroom operator could be able to help with the staging of products for our Finishing department or other tasks.

Our Finishing department (Ironers, Folders, Mat Rollers, Garment processing) usually have the entire day’s (8 or 10 hours) of production work available each day.?Doing the same job/task for extended periods can be tiring and boring which leads to excessive fatigue.?By Cross Training we can use different body parts and reinvigorate our mental attitude for the various tasks we are doing.?

Usually, 80% of our laundry products we are processing are Core Goods. ?These Core products could be garments, sheets, napkins, or mats depending on our laundry business type.?It is the other 20% of our products that usually degrade the Productivity of our production operation.?The finishing of this other 20% of these non-Core products needs to be scheduled in our plant.?This is where other Production employees like the Soil department (mentioned previously) can be Cross Trained and help us with this processing.

The final part of our laundry production operation is the Pack Out/Load Build operator.?This is an interesting aspect of the laundry operation.?When can they start the Pack out process??How do they do the Pack out process??(By Customer/Stop or Bulk Load).?These employees are the directors of our product needs of our laundry operation.

We have seen these employees cross-trained to unload the back of ironers and/or wrapping/tying our bundles of products.?At some laundries the Pack-Out operation does not start until a couple of hours after Production starts. These 1-2 employees can fill in their workday by starting in Soil or the Finishing departments.?Since they know the Pack out needs for the day, they can help coordinate/prioritize the Soil sorts for the washroom.

What are other benefits of conducting cross-training besides for normal laundry operations?

Vacation, or absence, coverage is the primary advantage, but cross training also helps identify personnel to replace key positions in our laundry operation due to retirement or advancement. Cross-training for positions with greater responsibility and compensation allows for employee growth and improved Morale. ?After cross-training you may even find a better fit for an employee’s primary position.?

One important component for Cross Training is to have written operation descriptions (Standard Operating Procedures) for every job/task in the production operation of our laundry.?We suggest putting these Operation descriptions close to workstations, describing the work done, in every department in our Laundry Production operation. Once all tasks for a department are identified and SOPs developed, the Production Manager, or supervisor, should determine the required number of cross-trained operator to adequately staff the position. Comparing the number of qualified operators to this requirement will identify gaps and highlight additional cross-training needs.??A fully qualified operator will be trained and able to perform at 100% of production efficiency.??Cross Training should be reviewed periodically to reexamine the gaps and schedule additional training as needed

The impact of cross training also helps in abnormal situations that seem to always happen.?This can be seen in the following two examples. One laundry had only one qualified Tunnel washer Operator. Unexpectedly he was gone for two weeks with a family emergency. The Production Manager filled in ably, but there was no one to do the myriad jobs the Production Manager normally did which resulted in significant inefficiencies and shortages to the customers.

Another laundry experiences substantial increases in ironed linen usage over a two-week period at the holidays. The increased need required two hours of overtime on the ironers each day if only Ironer Personnel were used. ?The laundry had Cross trained all finishing personnel (Garments, Folders) on the Ironer and employees were only required to work overtime every other day which increased efficiency by reducing fatigue.

?In the first example inadequate cross training resulted in disappointing results while in the second, proper use of cross training resulted in better results in servicing our customers and production labor expense.

To summarize, Cross Training is the primary method to reduce our Non-Productive (Idle) time part of our Production labor expense.?10 – 20% of our Production labor expense is Non-Productive time.?Cross Training also helps production operations in emergencies.?Everyone in our Production operation should have some form of Cross Training experience.