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Upon returning from our customers, after delivering clean linen and picking up the soiled linen, our drivers unload the carts of soiled linen from the trucks and bring them into the plant. -
The carts are then weighed and scanned in using infrared handheld scanning technology and the soiled pounds and carts are recorded per customer. -
Linen carts are then placed in a “cart dumper” and soiled linens are dumped out of the cart they were transported in and onto a breakup table. Soiled linens come bagged up from the hospitals, so our staff breaks open the bags and spreads the linens onto a conveyor belt which carries the linens up to the sort deck to be sorted.
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As linen comes in all mixed together from the patient floors and medical facilities, it is necessary to sort the linen by product into individual bins so that items may be washed by classification (i.e. towels, scrubs, gowns, sheets, etc.) to ensure an effective wash and efficient dry.
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Utilizing state-of-the-art technology, soiled linen is sorted per product classification by production employees into slings mounted to a rail transport system. The rail system weighs the slings as they are filled with linen items. Once a sling reaches full capacity with soiled linen, the sling automatically leaves the sort station on the rail system and is transported up into the high-rail system to the washer storage area to await washing.
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Slings of linen move automatically throughout the rail system without being prompted by an operator, using proximity sensors, compressed air, computers and gravity to transport the slings to the desired places throughout the plant seamlessly. After the sort process, the slings of linen align over 1 of 2 tunnel washers, or CBW’s (Continuous Batch Washers). When the system calls for the next load to be injected into the washer, the next available sling hanging from the overhead rail opens and releases the load of soiled linens into the mouth of the washer. One sling of linen makes up one compartment, or module (mod) in the washer. Our 8-mod tunnel washers each hold 150 pounds per mod, and each mod provides a different function or chemical injection in the wash process to clean the linens as they are pushed through the process mechanically. This wash process is effective and efficient, pumping out a load of hygienically clean linen every 3 minutes.
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Once linen discharges from the tunnel washers, it is dispensed into a press extractor which presses water out of the linen. Once the water is extracted, the linen comes out of the press in the form of a “cake” which is then loaded onto a trolly which takes the cake of linen to a dryer to complete the dry cycle.
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Once dry, the linen is automatically dispelled out of the dryer and onto another conveyor belt which then takes the linen and dumps it into another sling to be transported back up into the rail system for transport to the appropriate ironing/folding station based on product classification.
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The slings of linen will automatically be transported via overhead rail to the machine best suited to iron and fold each classification of goods. Small-piece folders are used to fold items such as towels, gowns, or baby blankets, while Blanket Blasters are used to fold bedspreads and bath blankets, and ironers are used to iron and fold pillowcases, scrubs and sheets. When the sling of freshly clean and dried linen arrives via the overhead rail to the proper machine’s “drop station”, our staff will push a button to dump the sling, which releases the linen from the sling into a dump cart on the floor level.
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After dumping the slings, trained staff will feed each item into the ironing and/or folding machines to rapidly produce large quantities of linen in the timeliest manner to meet the needs of our customers.
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Once the linen is folded, it is discharged onto a long conveyor belt which transports the linen to employees who load the linen items into transport carts to fill customer orders.
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When the carts are filled, a delivery slip is attached to the cart with the customer’s name and quantity of each item in the cart based on the customer’s order. The cart is then covered with a plastic bag to maintain linen quality, weighed and scanned out to the customer, and then loaded onto a truck to be delivered.
Phone: 325-455-8595
