Ready for a new era

At Business Park Stein, behind the current building, the new Nedlin Healthcare laundry will soon be erected. Erik de Win and Björn Frijns have worked on the preparation of Europe’s most innovative healthcare laundry service for 2.5 years. One as head of the family and former owner, the other as Director of Technical Affairs. An interview about innovation, hygiene, and sustainability.

The blueprints have been placed on the table. To the untrained eye, it is hard to make heads or tails of things – but to Erik and Björn, the design holds no secrets. This has become their nearly full-time project. “Look, here is where laundry will be arriving. These are the bags; these are the roll containers. And this is where we will sort the large items from the linens.” Erik de Win points to the design’s components one by one. The sorting robots. The laundry transport. The wringers. The chip station and the loading bays, where lorries will deliver dirty laundry and pick up the cleaned goods.

Advanced robotisation

Nedlin Healthcare’s new laundry will have a floor surface of no less than 11,000 m²: over 2.5 times that of the current building. Moreover, automation and robotisation will further boost capacity. Björn: “Soon, we will be able to process much larger volumes with the same number of employees”. And with good reason, because the laundry service has grown expansively in recent years.

And when Nedlin does update their business, they do it well. “The new laundry has to stand out from the current one. You have to make a difference, or what is the point of building something new”, Björn argues. This was the philosophy that turned the design process into a search for an advanced degree of automation and robotisation, including artificial intelligence. All with the goal of taking the next step in productivity, reliability, service and service provision, and ergonomics. And, of course, sustainability, which Nedlin holds in high regard.

BREEAM Outstanding

The entire laundry will be constructed in accordance with BREEAM Outstanding standards. BREEAM is the foremost certification method for a sustainability constructed environment, with Outstanding being the highest level of that standard. Björn: “The design has already taken into account the reusability of the materials. Insulation ratings of walls, floors, and the roof are very high, to minimise loss of energy. The building will have energy-efficient led-lighting that only switches on when and where needed. And the residual heat from the wringers and other machines will be reused in the laundry process”.

A feature unparalleled among European laundries is the new building’s own water purification plant, which will allow water consumption to kept to a bare minimum. What little water is lost to evaporation will replenished with purified water from the Hospitality laundry – thereby reducing water and energy consumption, since any residual warmth already present in the water will no longer need to be generated. Eventually, the combined range of smart procedures will cut back energy consumption from 0.09 to 0.06 m³ gas per kg of laundry, and save an annual 910,546 kg in CO₂.

But there is more. The green area will also be revised to include bat houses and other environmentally-oriented facilities. Even the construction process has to meet the strictest requirements, from water-saving toilets to insulated portacabins across the construction site. “BREEAM Outstanding applies not only to the building itself, but to the entire process surrounding it”, Erik confirms. A special BREEAM consultant, supervising the design process and the building’s development, will be observing during all phases.

100% hygienic

To ensure the new laundry is designed to deliver 100% hygiene, the Industry laundry in Hoensbroek was consulted closely. Its ISO 22000 certificate ensures clients of the highest level in food safety. The innovations developed by Nedlin as part of that process are being applied to the new Healthcare laundry as well. Employees and visitors can only visit the laundry via a sanitation lock, and these is a strict procedural separation between the clean and dirty laundry departments.

“The eventual laundry will be a very clean one”, Björn says. “Guests will wear coats; everyone will be wearing hairnets. Dirty clothing will be sorted into four lines using RFID and UHF chips.” This makes standard of hygiene the highest in the industry – which is great for clients and employees alike, as it ensures a pleasant, clean work environment.

Working more comfortably

Major steps are also being taken in terms of ergonomics. “The advanced level of automation means that many manual operations will be performed automatically”, Björn explains.

“Workflow is safeguarded by the software.” Clothing and medical duvets are equipped with a chip, making the work process more efficient and transparent. Large components, like medical duvets and sheets, and separated from the other linens at the start of the process. The remaining laundry is introduced to the employees individually and as gradually and consistently as possible. This will make the reliability of supply even higher than before.

Dryers and clothing finishers - “everything that makes a noise”, Björn says – are assigned to the intermediate floor. More comfortable for the employees, and easier to facilitate optimum heat flow usage. The role of the employee is increasingly shifting to that of operator. Björn: “Employees keep track, translate software-generate tips into actual applications”. This way, the current steps help to keep the work pleasant and interesting.

Robotic arm folding

Completing the preparation was quite a feat. “Like the towel folders”, says Erik. “To convince a robot to pick up a towel by two of its corners and then position it properly… It takes some doing!” Or consider the cameras used to recognise the linens: they have to be trained by passing through every item 4,000 times, in various configurations. Only then can the margin for error be brought down to 1 in 1,000. Because that is how high Nedlin has set its own standard of performance.

Once the linens are clean, they are stacked on a tray in piles of no more than 10 items, and moved into the warehouse, where a so-called iCollected manages the inventory at item level. Once an order is received, the correct item is picked from the racks, and translated to a delivery receipt for the container by robotic arms – all fully automated.

Affordable healthcare

Similarly, the entire process, from laundry arrival to laundry issue, has been scrutinised for any possible improvements. A more efficient folding process? A decrease in water consumption? A better way of using residual heat? These are issues that senior member De Win enjoys tackling. Innovation is in his blood, ever since he first stepped in to his father’s laundry.

“We have never been able to make these kinds of improvements. The technology simply was not advanced enough. Now, we are at the dawn of a new era, where we can make real use of that automation and robotisation. The current design also takes the potential for future developments into account. We are striking a new blow for the future. And with good reason, because it lets us help keep healthcare affordable.”