A conveyor system is a fundamental means of reducing labor costs and providing consistent workflow. These systems are an important part of larger Water Energy Green Laundry Systems. There are multiple styles, configurations and sizes available to fit perfectly wherever you need them to accelerate production in your laundry.
Soil-Sort Conveyors
A Soil-Sort Conveyor is an innovative device used to facilitate rapid sorting of incoming, dirty linens. A Soil-Sort Conveyor when used properly will increase the sorting rate per labor hour by 10-fold.
Some of the reasons you should sort incoming linens are:
- Sheets and pillow cases should be washed separately. Although the fabric may be the same, the soil content is quite different. Makeup, natural and applied hair oils, lipstick, etc. are regularly found on pillow cases but rarely found on sheets. The pillow cases may need to go through a wash with hot water and traditional chemicals to get all this stuff out. Why waste energy washing sheets in hot water when all you need to do is separate them from the pillow cases.
- If fitted sheets are used, they could be sorted and washed separately because they need to be run at a slower speed and cooler temperature through the ironers than flat sheets.
- Terry linens should be sorted by size and soil content. Hand towels and wash cloths can potentially be very soiled with make-up, shoe polish and body fluids relative to larger towels. Bath towels and bath mats are generally just wet with very low soil loading.
- Keeping each classification separate will not only reduce your rewash rate but also enhance production efficiency and throughput.
A soil-sort conveyor is required to achieve a high efficiency in the sorting area. This piece of equipment can increase a worker’s sorting ability from a meager 100 pounds per hour if done manually to 1,000 pounds or more per hour. A conveyor is positioned where the dirty linens come into the facility. You install a cart-dumper to automatically take the linen carts being wheeled-in or unloaded off of trucks and dump the linens onto the soil-sort conveyor. Multiple workers stand along the sides of this conveyor and each worker has a specific type of linen or soil loading they are looking for. When a piece of linen matching what they are supposed to locate passes in front of them on the conveyor, they grab it and throw it into a bin just for those specific pieces. The workers really don’t have to move around much at all. They stay focused and don’t get exhausted walking back and forth or they don’t have to sit on the floor to get the sorting done. The laundry does all the moving down the conveyor. This increases your production flow exponentially in the sorting area.
Benefits of a Soil-Sorting Conveyor
- Increase the workflow.
- Reduce the number of laundry carts that can clutter the production area.
- Greatly reduce the amount of physical movement your workers must do to get the job done.
- Decrease the potential pathogen exposure hazard to employees in healthcare linen facilities by keeping them from having to unload the linen from the carts and move it around the room.
There are other types of conveyors used for a multitude of applications within an efficient laundry plant.
- Take-Away Conveyors move linens away from an area of production so workers can continue a specific operation without having to stop and carry processed linens to another finishing area.
- Slings and other overhead rail-type conveyor systems are used to rapidly and efficiently carry linens from sorting areas to the washers. This system automatically dumps the linens into the washers which accelerates the loading process and your production.
- Other types of conveyors are used to carry linens from washers to dryers, washers to ironers, dryers to finishing, finishing to loading, etc.