| AUTOMATION AND ENERGY
MANAGEMENT -- PERFORMANCE KEYS
AT MARRIOTT TEXTILE SERVICES
EDISON, NJ -- Originally constructed and opened in 1985 as a 35,000
square foot facility to service four properties, Marriott New Jersey
Textile Services in Edison, New Jersey has grown substantially over
the past seven years. They currently service over thirty Marriott hotel
operations in Philadelphia, Metropolitan New York City including Westchester
County and Long Island, as well as all of New Jersey. The facility handles
the textiles from more than 14,000 rooms, accounting for 40 million
pounds processed each year, with the capacity to handle another 10 million
pounds as new properties come on board.
Property brands include Marriott, Renaissance, Courtyard and Residence
Inn hotels, as well as Marriott vacation ownership villas in Southern
New Jersey and ExecuStay corporate apartments in New York.
Jim Morris, general manager of this now 105,000 square foot facility
employing more than 180 people, runs a very tight ship to maintain the
optimum levels of productivity and cost-effectiveness. “We are
not a profit center,” says Mr. Morris, “we are what is referred
to as a cost center. We provide the same level of service at the same
basic cost to all of our customers, whether their property is Marriott-owned
or franchised and managed by another company. We have to compete with
on-premises laundries (OPL’s) as well as other outside commercial
laundries.”
So far, the facility has been a very successful competitor. A fleet
of seven tractor-trailer and straight trucks maintain a tight schedule
on their routes between the properties and the laundry, which operates
two shifts Monday through Friday and single shifts on Saturday and Sunday.
There are three doors for soil receiving and five for clean shipping.
When the trucks are unloaded, the containers are staged next to the
sorting areas and then handled on a first-in, first-out basis to eliminate
the possibility of spoilage due to heat, especially during hot summer
months.
SORTING BY ARTICLE
“Our textiles are sorted by article because we wash by article,”
says Morris. “That helps us maintain the flow of textiles that
we need on the other side from a shipping standpoint.” Properties
phone or fax in their orders each day by article, such as three containers
of double sheets at 400 sheets per container, or one container of pillowcases
at 2,000 pillowcases per container. The facility has more than1,500
of these wheeled containers moving through the laundry, at the properties,
or in transit. “I know that in many other laundry operations they
will wash all the terry together, for example, and then separate them
after they come out of the dryer,” said Morris. “We separate
the hand towels from the washcloths from the bath towels and the bath
mats first, and then wash by article. From a shipping standpoint, if
I need more washcloths because of the way the orders are coming in from
the properties, I have the ability to pull just the washcloths and not
additional towels, hoping there are washcloths in the mix. The same
holds true for bed linen, such as pillowcases and sheets.”
MOVING THE GOODS
Transporting the linen on the floor of the facility
are 1500 Meese and Chemtainer carts. Two computerized Dunnewolt rail
systems move the textiles overhead through the plant, a closed loop
system for soiled textiles and another dedicated to the “clean”
side of the plant. As the eighteen sorting bins on the sorting platform
are filled, they are unloaded onto a conveyor that transfers the textiles
into slings. Filled slings are hoisted to the rail storage system, suspended
above the work area. There are eleven storage rails, dedicated to specific
textiles. Five rails are dedicated to sheets, two rails dedicated to
bath towels and one rail dedicated to washcloths, hand towels, pillowcases
and bath mats.
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From here, the slings are called to
three Lavatec continuous batch tunnel washers, each with eighteen
110 lb. pocket modules. Every minute or so, a 110 lb. pressed
cake is delivered from each tunnel by automated conveyor to one
of the eighteen Lavatec 220 lb. dryers that are configured so
as to provide six dryers to support the output from each of the
three tunnels. After drying, the batches are conveyed to slings
on the “clean” side of the plant and again staged
according to article for finishing operations. A Lavatec computer
system and a Dunnewolt computer system share information to provide
accurate readouts on centralized CRT screens.
“When a sling is called to one of the tunnel washers it’s
going to tell the tunnel washer that it’s filled with bath
towels, for example, so it gets the correct formulation of chemicals,”
says Morris. “Then, when the batch is transported to the
next available dryer, the computer says, ‘Oh, these are
bath towels, so we’re going to dry these for fifteen minutes,
as opposed to pillowcases that would only need about three minutes.’
And then, when the batch comes out of the dryer, it’s going
to say, ‘Okay, I recognize that the linen coming out is
bath towels and it’s going to go to this predetermined location
on the clean side.’ So, we are literally not touching anything
after we’ve sorted it. We just monitor the computers to
make sure they’re doing all the things they’re supposed
to do. It’s all automated and very streamlined.”
Food and beverage items (table linen and napkins) are washed
in 8 Washex washer extractors and go directly to the ironers which
consist of 4 Passat, 3 Lavatec and 2 Braun flatwork ironers.
Reclaim items are dried in a 400 lb. Challenge dryer and 2 Braun
small piece accumulators catch small items not folded (e.g.-napkins.)
Also on the finishing side are 3 Jean Michel Mini Neptune vacuum
assist feeders, 5 Braun spreader feeders, 1 Sager spreader feeder
and 7 Braun folders.
SAVING ENERGY
Morris is also on the top of his game when it
comes to energy management. The plant utilizes a heat reclamation
system manufactured by Thermal Engineering of Arizona. Heat reclamation
allows them to take 190 degree hot water from a tank in their
boiler room and blend it with incoming cold city water to provide
a resulting 130 degree rinse water for the tunnel washers. “The
heat reclamation system provides hot water for our rinse cycles,”
says Morris. “Then we’re utilizing the state-of-the-art
membrane presses on the Lavatec
tunnels for maximum water extraction. Also, from an energy management
standpoint, we’ve installed coaxial ducts on the dryers
to use hot discharge air to preheat the incoming air. So, on the
bottom line, the combination of the hot water rinse, the extraction
of the maximum amount of water and the preheating of the dryer
air with coaxial ducts has reduced the drying time for textiles
significantly. Before these energy management measures, it had
been taking us thirty minutes to dry 150 pounds of towels. Now,
we dry 220 pounds in just fifteen minutes.”
Taking this a step further, not only is the rinse water reused
inside the tunnel because of Lavatec’s counterflow system,
all of the water that leaves the tunnel is piped over to a line
of eight Washex washer extractors and used as their primary wash
water. These washer extractors are assigned the task of washing
the table linen and napkins from the properties’ restaurants
and banquet areas.
Managing energy also plays a role in providing spot cooling
for the employees at all the work stations. “We have five
ground wells outside of our building,” says Morris. “They
vary in levels from 200 feet to 600 feet. We bring that cold water
up from the ground to the roof of our building, pass it through
coils in the air duct system, and then send that cool, comfortable
air directly to the workstations for our associates. Now, having
used that water for the express purpose of providing comfort,
we then condition it with special softeners designed for ground
well water and blend it with the incoming city water and send
it to the tunnel washers.”
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