What does new technology in my laundry mean for me?

While attending a major conference of laundries recently, I had some free time on my hands between meetings, so I decided to get some fresh air and recharge my battery by taking a quick walk downtown for a cup of coffee. While avoiding my emails, I walked past a local golf shop and noticed a new set of clubs being placed on display in the window. What caught my eye about this particular set of clubs was the new technology on the heads of the irons and woods; their shape, construction and how different they were to my current set of clubs in my garage.

During my brief conversation with the club pro, he explained to me how golf club technology has changed and allows the everyday golfer to hit the ball further with more accuracy. The new technology affects the performance and overall life of the product as well as the advantages it gives to typical hackers, like myself a better advantage at breaking into the 90’s.
While walking back to my conference for another round of meetings and educational sessions, I was still thinking about the new golf club technology witnessed firsthand. I had a sudden epiphany about the similarities of my visit to the golf shop and what we as a company are offering our laundry customers.

In today’s ever-changing healthcare environment, we as manufacturers are constantly researching, developing and introducing new innovative fabrics and styles of uniforms and patient apparel for laundries and healthcare facilities. These new concepts will not only help reduce energy costs, but also add life to the product and help in the reduction of replacements. The hottest trend in laundries today is RFID technology. This technology is becoming common in most laundries and helps to track the life cycle of any given product, while making laundries more efficient and also aid in enhancement of the quality of products being delivered.

The laundry industry has evolved from front load washers to top load washers to tunnels. As the equipment used to process flatwork and garments today continues to change, so must the products we rent and/or launder on a daily basis. Energy costs, water consumption, apparel and linen life, new fabrics and equipment technology continue to be on the mind of every successful laundry operator. More and more plants today are upgrading, outfitting, re-engineering or even building new facilities with new technology to produce and deliver a far superior product while keeping their production, delivery and energy costs down in order to meet the competitive demands of our industry and customers.

The same can be said for the textiles and uniforms being rented and/or sold today. We have evolved from 100% cotton to a cotton rich blend to a poly rich blend in an effort to increase the overall life of the product and reduce energy costs. Now with the introduction of 100% polyester garments, poly/rayon and much more, we are not only adding more life to the products, but adding a better hand as well thus making the end-user more comfortable.

One way to keep up with the ever-changing technology is for vendors to engage and visit with our laundry partners more often to introduce new technology and ideas as it pertains to fabrics, styling, tracking and processing equipment. We need to stay current as to what is going on in our world of laundries. As the needs and demands of our customers continue to change on a daily basis, we need to keep up with technology in an effort to offer the best products to our customers and their customers as well.

Change is often difficult, but can ultimately be a good thing. New technology improves our game and allows us to perform at a higher level without adding additional costs to our bottom line. Is it imperative that everyone should make the change to the new technology? We believe to stay competitive and meet the rapidly changing needs of our laundry customers, we must recognize and welcome the emergence of new technology to help laundries to increase their profitability.

As Henry Ford once said when asked what his customers want, he replied, “They want horses that run faster.” Hopefully when playing golf in the future, I will see you on more fairways and in fewer sand traps.

Scott Delin, Vice President of Sales
Fashion Seal Healthcare®, a signature brand of Superior Uniform Group®
Contact Scott at (610) 442-0880 or
sdelin@FashionSealHealthcare.com