Productivity improves 12.8%; exceeds client’s goal by 28%.
High level of service is maintained with 13% reduction in labor hours.
Strategic Intent
Maintain a 100% customer retention rate during phase of dramatic growth by providing high quality customer service, at lowest possible cost
Situation
- Commercial laundry and linen service company with 38 facilities in North America
- Processes over 455 million pounds annually for clients in healthcare, hospitality and other industries
- Expanding rapidly through acquisition
- Stretching their talent pool beyond its capability, leading to concerns that performance will suffer
- Facing increased competition from smaller local operators and cooperatives
Issues and Barriers
- Unacceptable levels of productivity throughout
- Poor alignment of common goals
- Cultural differences between management and employees
- Lack of skilled process improvement drivers throughout organization
- Varied compliance to existing policies and procedures across operations and locations
Key Implementations
- Align and communicate goals to all levels of organization
- Improve productivity by reengineering core processes in key operating areas
- Develop front-line scheduling and production control elements
- Increase proactive barrier resolution versus reactive problem solving among supervisors and managers
- Improve management of labor resources to meet scheduled demands
- Develop and install best practices
Results
Productivity Increases Exceed Client’s Goal by 28%
Installing a process to streamline integration of newly acquired laundries, Brooks International helps the company achieve these benefits:
- Labor hours reduced by 13%
- Productivity improves 12.8%; exceeds client’s goal by 28%
The company is now prepared to handle continuing expansion, while providing their trademark quality service.
Client Perspective
I was looking for uniformity between our sites. Brooks has allowed us to get all sites (old and newly acquired) to operate with a set of common management tools.
—Senior Vice President, Operations
