TULSA, Okla. — LeBron James just signed up for his 24th year in the NBA at the age of 41. He signed for the veteran’s minimum pay of $4 million. Last year, he made $56 million. He didn’t re-sign for the money or probably even the chance at a title. He stated that he signed because he still loves the process of being an NBA player. 

I can only imagine that the process of being a great NBA player involves dieting and physical workouts. These routines can be addictive, especially if you see the results. 

This year, the runner-up in the Tour De France was asked about what it would take to win the event. He talked about how he believes in his training regimen and feels like he is headed in the right direction. He enjoys the process of becoming a better cyclist. 

Cyclists have very regimented training programs that cover what they can eat each day, how far they ride, types of rides, etc. They probably do not get many easy rides around the block during the season. 

Athletes at all levels can relate. The process of working your program, diet or training program is addictive. If you have ever trained for a marathon, you know that the next day after the marathon, mixed in with being proud of your accomplishment, is the question of what you should do now. 

You have spent the last several months training for this day. You have logged your daily training and what you ate each day. You know what to eat to improve and what food to avoid. Now you are left with just winging it every day. You can eat anything you want, train or not train. It is kind of a letdown. 

Great athletes are not just born to be great. They work their craft daily. 

In this same way, laundries are not just built to be great. They work their processes daily to get there. 

The laundry industry can get you addicted to the process of producing laundry. A good laundry has good processes in place to produce good-quality laundry daily. A laundry with good processes is a joy to work in. 

Laundries with no real plan for the process are not very enjoyable to be in. Those laundries don’t have equipment that starts up on Monday, have no game plan for when employees call off. They just wing it daily.

Plant processes involve how the maintenance department maintains the machinery. Not only the preventive maintenance, but how the machinery is handled daily. From proper start-up times to the running of the wax cloth on the ironers. All processes should be documented so you know what works and doesn’t work. 

Sometimes you can spend weeks looking for an issue only to find an employee has changed how they were performing a task without telling anyone. It is not micromanaging to want to know exactly what took place in the laundry. It is more of a necessity to know. 

When I first became a maintenance manager, I was fortunate to work for a very knowledgeable general manager and plant manager. They kept me from making changes that I wasn’t qualified to make concerning daily processes expected from the maintenance department. 

The ability to fix and maintain machinery is different than the knowledge of how maintenance contributes to the laundry. Both skills are learned with time. 

Production processes state how we fold an item every day. All linen should be processed the same way every day. What time we start each department daily. What we expect from each department, from the quantity of items daily to the quality of the items. The process of linen injections each month — how and when you perform this task is a big issue if you are not planning for it. 

When I first became a plant manager, I thought I understood equipment and production. Learning about linen injections was a completely different animal. I naively thought people sent our linen back as expected. I didn’t know they sent it back to their storage closet, back to another facility, back to their house, back to the landfill, and some came back to us. 

Human resources and safety both have processes they need to constantly follow. Employee turnover is real; the process of recruiting and onboarding is a major process for any business. Safety is an ongoing process. Just because you are safe today doesn’t mean you will remain that way tomorrow. The process of training new hires and constantly checking the conditions of your facilities are important daily processes of the safety department. 

TRSA Hygienically Clean and Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC) certifications give you the blueprint for the processes in the laundry. They act like coaches instructing you on what it takes to produce good-quality linen. Follow the procedures and you will be pretty good at laundry. 

Of course, that is just the foundation. You will add to all those processes with more than you discover you need. 

Putting all the processes together is the addiction that keeps a lot of us in the laundry industry. Issues that arise in a laundry are just chances to improve your process. Never think that how you are performing a task today is the only way to accomplish it. Processes can and will always be improved.