Laundries Transformation

Our client, the largest provider of centralised laundry linen services for public and private hospitals, aged care facilities and accommodation clients were seeking to drive operational efficiencies across the 14 laundry sites they had located nationally. We worked with senior executives and subject matter experts from across the country to develop a baseline of current state processes and pain points.   The technology team were able to utilise the process designs and analysis to help them finalise their laundries technology roadmap, solution designs and business case.

The laundries business had grown through acquisition which had resulted in disparate processes and systems across each entity and limited service delivery alignment.  There were several key challenges the organisation was seeking to resolve in the laundries transformation project.

Business process standardisation – There was no standard operating model that ensured alignment across all plants.

Operational inefficiencies – There were gaps and inconsistencies in business processes across each site which resulted in inconsistent delivery of services and operational management costs.

Technology – The current systems in place to support the business were aged, inflexible and inconsistent across the laundry sites.  This was increasing the total cost of ownership.

A high-level process architecture was defined with the senior executives.  This was focused on developing a clear view of the end to end processes.  This list of processes was then prioritised to form a basis for workshops with key stakeholders.  Key subject matter experts from across the country were co-located at the head office in Melbourne for a series of process design workshops.

Our approach in the workshop was to utilise design thinking principles to gain an understanding of the following key areas:

1. What are the current pain points in each process?
2. What are the priority issues that need to be resolved?
3. How does the process currently work at each site?
4. What ideas do we have to improve the current process?

By starting out understanding the key pain points in each process we were able to quickly work with participants to form a view of the priorities that needed to be resolved.  We then moved everyone’s thinking to visualising the current process design.  By visualising their work it helped them see the bottlenecks and inconsistencies across each site.  Each group would play back their process designs, pain points and opportunities for improvement to the rest of the team. This collaborative approach enabled them to discuss and agree on what the priorities were from a collective viewpoint.

The laundries process review provided a basis for evidenced based decision making to underpin the laundries transformation program.  The key outcomes from the project were:

Formal process documentation – 38 process areas within the laundries business had been formally documented for the first time

Current issues and pain points defined – 288 process issues were identified, discussed, categorised and prioritised.

Strategic alignment – 148 opportunities for improvement were identified and aligned to the organisations strategic pillars.

The successful review enabled the organisation to move forward with a number of key activities:

• Develop future state process designs and detailed business requirements
• Develop the Laundries IT Roadmap and future state operating model
• Develop a strategy for change to underpin the laundries transformation
• Develop a “Compliance Interface” as a centralised, dynamic repository for referencing current policies, processes and procedures
• Prioritise the opportunities to plan and implement a continuous improvement program across the business

These process design workshops were the first steps towards understanding how the Laundries sites currently operated.  The work provided a baseline for continuous improvement and business transformation activities.​