Authors (including presenting author) :
CHAN KH, IP WK, HO YH, CHAN HY
Affiliation :
Butterfly Beach Laundry, Tuen Mun Hospital
Introduction :
BBL is a centralized hospital laundry built by Architectural Services Department (ArchSD) and the operation has been commenced since 2000. Because of the aging equipment and the increasing trend in the demand for laundry services, replacement of laundry equipment was commenced in Jan 2019. 47.05Mn were spent on a large scale laundry equipment replacement plan. The replacement project includes the replacement and addition of major laundry equipment.
Objectives :
To enhance efficiency and increase the production capacity;
To improve service sustainability and reliability;
To reduce manual handling of laundry workers and in turn, reduce the risk of injury.
Methodology :
The large-scale equipment replacement plan is conducted in 7 phases in 1.5 years to minimize the interruption of laundry services to our client hospitals. Equipment includes 3 sets of Continuous Batch Washing System (CBWS), two sets of flatwork ironing system, replacement, and addition of 7 sets standalone tumble dryers.
Capture and review the production statistics at each laundry process, and carry out a detailed analysis for identifying the bottlenecks of the production workflow.
Review the improved efficiency and production capacity after the completion of the replacement project.
Result & Outcome :
The bottlenecks of BBL were identified in the drying and ironing section. In this project, the replacement of CBWS with an additional batch tumble dryer was installed to each set of CBWS to enhance the drying capacity (total 3 sets). The drying efficiency was greatly enhanced by 58% (26 minutes faster) of each set of the batch tumble dryer. The drying capacity of the entire CBWS was increased by 21.5% (approx. 7.5 tons/ day).
The production volume of replacing 2 sets of flatwork ironing system was enhanced by 55% per month (approx. 4,100pcs/ day).
Upon the completion of replacement project, it was observed that BBL’s overall capacity was increased by 20% per month with an average production of 39 tons per day.
The average downtime of three sets of CBWS was drastically decreased by 383% (from 18.66 hours to 3.86 hours per month) after the replacement of CBWS. Among the 3 sets of new CBWS, 2 sets of CBWS were able to share the use of 10 batch tumble dryers. This enhancement not only enabled the dryers to be fully utilized but also allowed another tunnel washer to use all the 10 dryers when one tunnel washer was malfunction. This enhanced the operational efficiency and reduced the unbudgeted expenditure on ad-hoc outsourcing laundry services generated by unexpected machinery breakdown. Meanwhile, the laundry services could become more sustainable and reliable. In light of improved laundry production efficiency, capacity, and stability, BBL could have more flexibility to cope with the demand surge of laundry services, such as winter surge and the outbreak of diseases. As such, BBL was entrusted to handle the unanticipated workload from the Community Treatment Facility (CTF) at Asia-World Expo to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
An automatic linen sheet separator, which assists the laundry worker to separate a brunch of linen into individual pieces, was added in each of the flatwork ironing systems to reduce the risk of injury during the workers pull out the linen piece by piece from a brunch of linen (more than 60 kg) from linen carts before feeding into the flatwork ironer.
All of the new standalone tumble dryers were equipped with a tilting function to facilitate the unloading of the linen by tilting to the front which believed to be more ergonomic and lower the risk of manual handling and injury.
In the recent 10 years, BBL was facing unexpected service suspension due to the downtime of equipment and fade out of spare parts of laundry equipment. It is grateful for us to have the opportunities for replacing and adding the major laundry equipment. It is believed that the efficiency and reliability of BBL’s laundry services could contribute to the development of clinical services in Hong Kong.
