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Rentex Floron and Wasserij (laundry service) De Blinde optimise their logistical processes together with GPS-Buddy

Rentex Floron in Bolsward and Wasserij De Blinde in Heerenveen were both founded over 100 years ago. Rentex Floron is specialised in the cleaning and leasing of textiles for hospitals and care facilities. Wasse-rij De Blinde focuses on cleaning and leasing textiles for the food service industry. As a fourth generation family firm, the laundries strive for continuity in order to be able to pass the companies on to the next generation. The provision of service is aimed at sustainability and innovation instead of short-term profits. At the laundries, where over 500 employees work, it’s not only about clean and freshly ironed washing. The entire logistical operation around the washing process is just as important explains Richard Mulder, KEW (Client Own Laundry) Production Manager and head of transport at Rentex Floron. They were looking for a reliable partner to optimise these logistic flows. We chose the GPS-Buddy systems to give us support and advice.

The customer experience comes firstRichard explains: “Hospitals, health care institutions, the GGZ, private clinics and other care facilities are among the most important group of customers of Rentex Floron. For these customers, we lease and clean all kinds of textiles such as the standard bath, bed and household textiles and also the work clo-thes and uniforms of the staff as well as the personal laundry of the residents of a care facility. We pick it up, clean it and return the fresh clean laundry again to each individual resident if the care facility so desi-res. This requires a huge logistical operation, certain-ly when it concerns the laundry of individuals. A blou-se, a pair of trousers or even a handkerchief can be of great personal and emotional value for residents of a care facility, so these are items we must handle with care. That is why we are constantly investing in training our staff and we choose to use user-friendly applications for our drivers, our administration as well as our production employees. ‘‘

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Simplifying processesBesides the task-oriented driving of the drivers, downloading the tachograph data has also been automated. “The driver’s cards and the data from the mass memory of the vehicle need to be displayed and stored on a regular basis. This activity takes a great deal of time because we do it manually. That is why we also automated this process with the digi-tal tachograph download solution that GPS-Buddy offers. This solution makes both the tachograph and the ride and vehicle information available in one control environment which is more efficient and the first step towards total transparency. In addition to the administrative advantages, the automation has also made the logistical processes more transparent. This transparency applies to the whole chain, from employees on the work floor and our administration to our customers and drivers,” Richard says.

Fotografie: Guido Hibma fotografie

Automation and transportRentex Floron has grown rapidly these past years and to accommodate this, the production capacity has been expanded. With a view to further growth, we decided to start a GPS-Buddy pilot project at Wasserij De Blinde. Because the food service laundry focuses on one type of client, it made sen-se to begin here. With the knowledge we acquired we can further expand our ambition in the area of automation and the logistical flows that are linked to it,” says Richard.

Respect for man and the environment“Our drivers also follow the Code 95 training and refresher training, of course. This is a logical step in looking at the driving behaviour of the drivers in the future. The refresher training focuses largely on good driving behaviour and it is only logical to gradually also pay attention to this in practice. An analysis of driving behaviour which covers pulling out and anti-cipating braking measures at full speed, is not only interesting in curbing fuel use. It also concerns the manifestation on the road and how the company is represented. A driving analysis gives us key points to discuss with the drivers so we can offer extra trai-ning on an individual basis in collaboration with the driving school. To us, corporate social responsibility means not only paying attention to CO2 emissions, but also to our employees’ behaviour. That is why automation was a well-considered choice that goes further than just the office systems.”

“We work with various software packages and sys-tems. At the start of the pilot project we began by au-tomating the tasks. We were already using GPS-Bud-dy to see where our lorries were driving. Thanks to the availability of real-time information we were able to make better plans and keep our customers better informed. The logical next step was automating the tasks so that our drivers could drive more task-orien-ted. That is why we decided, in collaboration with GPS-Buddy, to make a link that would send the data from the GPS-Buddy systems back to our ERP sys-tem. You could actually consider this a kind of rever-se integration. In addition to that, we also utilise the GPS-Buddy Driver App so that our drivers can check off each task when they have visited a customer and the delivery has been completed. What’s more, our customers now also have insight into how many roll containers with clean laundry we have delivered and how many roll containers with dirty laundry we have picked up.”