- • Reduce labor to match revenue or the pounds you are currently producing – Reduction of labor hours is a balancing act especially with the new unemployment rules that are established by each state.
- Keep a minimum crew of production operators to do “Special” projects even if our product flow is extremely low.
- Remember our production labor team members are assets. Now is a great time to discuss operations and improve our production flow with our key employees.
- Inventory Review and Organization-
- Repurpose employees to do inventories and verify your assets. This means In-House and, if possible, at customer locations.
- Garment stockrooms are usually in need of a clean-up and reorganization & we never have the time to do this important operation.
- Shelving reorganization from production floor to other storage locations. Let’s get rid of the cobwebs in our facilities. Linen inventories should be documented and analyzed for used and new products.
- Clean up our Stain Wash Products–
- Take time to Wash properly and inspect completely during our finishing of these items.
- Inspect products completely during our finishing process and rag out as needed.
- Check all Rewash/Mend/Rag Out carts and verify these are all empty.
- Preventative Maintenance and Clean Up Production Equipment-
- Dryers: Read various publications on how to clean out the inside of dryers which will provide more precious drying time.
- Ironers can be separated from the feeding and folding equipment to do a thorough cleaning. Preventative maintenance checklists can be completed right now.
- Folders can be checked and repaired. Observe each of your automated folders as there is always a glitch our production employees just absorb as they process products.
- Walk around the plant to identify anything involved that is not used for processing or storage-
- Either throw away these items or put them into a storage location out of the way in production. There are signs in Production from “back in the day!” It is probably time to remove these old communications.
- Paint areas of need. This is a quick, and inexpensive way of improving appearance.
- Look at everything on our floors and shelves. Do we need these items on our production floor? If not, then let’s remove them.
- Whenever floorspace is opened we improve productivity!
- Put a Plan together to identify and remove Non-Performers in Production-
- Decisions have already been made on which employees to lay off, move to part-time, and who to retain.
- Review your P&L and reduce the non-essential spending.
- Understand and prioritize expenses that keep you operational and generate revenue.
- Visualize new investments for locations and improvement in production. During normal production operations we see the “Forest”. Now, in slower times, we can see the “Tree”. For example, maybe a larger feed table can fit in front of our ironer.
- Prepare for when deliveries start up–
- Have a communication plan for employees for when we restart production operations. Provide updates for our employees via texts or phone calls.
- We have a certain % of products at our customer’s locations at this moment. How much product will they need once they start up?
- Schedule key meetings with your leadership team to prepare for this start up.
- Document what products and amounts will be needed when we restart production operations. (Short term – 1st Week of Delivery and Long Term – In 4 Weeks after 1st delivery.
- Verify this needed product inventory is ready and easily packed out, or load built for our routes and accounts.
When we restart our Laundry Production Operations, we should have the look of a New Plant!
