We celebrate and thank the many U.S. veterans that serve in our industry. Make sure to read "Veterans in the Laundry and Linen Industry" from the fall issue of fresh Magazine. Six military veterans who’ve transitioned to careers in the laundry industry shared their thoughts about what vets bring to the table and why industry leaders should be hiring more of them. Accountability, work ethic, leadership, resourcefulness — these are just a few of the traits instilled by the military and some of the reasons veteran applicants tend to be faster learners, more well-rounded and generally successful than their civilian peers.
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 Since 1976, ALM’s Laundry & Linen College has provided comprehensive training to the textile care services industry's top leaders. During last week’s Production and Operations session, laundry professionals studied equipment sizing and selection, safety, washroom chemistry, production metrics, preventative maintenance and more from industry experts David Bernstein, Bob Corfield, Rob Hewitt, Graham Skinner and Barry Spurlock, as well as ALM Executive Director Linda Fairbanks.
The cornerstone of the school is the program’s team projects, in which students apply the concepts learned throughout the week by planning a laundry, including equipment selection and layout, while meeting safety and quality metrics and maximizing production efficiency. In addition to classroom learning and the applied learning project, students also expressed appreciation for the incredible value attained through the comradery with other students while they shared ideas, tips, knowledge and experience with one another throughout the week.
The Laundry & Linen College is in session twice annually, with Production and Operations courses taught in fall and Linen Management courses in spring. In 2020, the spring session is April 20-24, 2020, and the fall session is November 2-6, 2020. More information is available on ALM's website.
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Laundry professionals working on their Certified Laundry and Linen Manager (CLLM) certification are loving the new online option! Lisa Abeyta, CLLM, from Standard Textile recently earned her CLLM and attributes her success to ALM's TRAIN System.
"I am relatively new to healthcare textiles and had recently gone through an extensive training with my employer. Being new, I wanted to bring a level of credibility to my role and decided to pursue my CLLM. I signed up for the course about a year ago, but, as with most things, my job got busy and I never found the time to put my nose into the book. Then I saw that ALM recently added an online option called TRAIN. I knew that was right up my alley, since I am a visual learner. So I read the book and watched the webinars. Boy, they were a great supplement to the reading material and they made it so easy to learn. I would tell anyone who wants to get their CLLM to 'just do it.' I spent about two months really studying consistently and actually went thought the TRAIN CLLM series twice, once to learn and then again for review. It was very much worth the time and money. Thanks ALM for making this so easy!"
Start your CLLM journey today by visiting our website. For those who wish to expand their knowledge in only one aspect of the industry rather than gaining the knowledge of full certification, individual courses are also available for purchase.
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The holidays are approaching, and ALM offices will be closed in observance during the following dates:
- November 28-29, 2019
- December 23-25, 2019
- December 31, 2019-January 1, 2020
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USP 800 was published by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention in February 2016 to describe practice and quality standards for handling hazardous drugs in healthcare settings. These guidelines were developed in an effort to promote patient safety, worker safety and environmental protection. The deadline for compliance with USP 800 is December 1, 2019.
ALM provided guidance for handling linens exposed to hazardous drugs in 2004, and that guidance remains an excellent practice for maintaining a safe work environment for healthcare laundry processing facilities and aligns well with the revised OSHA guidance. The challenge for healthcare laundries has always been their inability to distinguish linens from patients who had received hazardous drugs in the previous 48 hours from other linens. Compliance with USP 800 provides laundries and their healthcare customers with both the challenge and the opportunity to work together to establish lines of communication that will comply with the standard and keep employees safe in an efficient and equitable manner.
From Barry Spurlock, partner at Crump Spurlock Attorneys of Law and safety professor at EKU: “There currently exists no specific federal OSHA standard regulating employee exposure to the hazards of handling hazardous drugs (HDs). However, laundry employers should still be aware that OSHA requirements and liability may exist even in the absence of such standards. Even in the absence of a specific state or federal OSHA standard on employee exposure to HDs, laundry employers may still be cited pursuant to federal or state OSH Act general duty clauses. Additionally, there may still be requirements pursuant to general OSHA standards on hazard communication (Hazcom), employee medical records, etc. Accordingly, it is prudent that laundries provide a safe employee environment by engaging their healthcare customers in discussions regarding the laundry’s policies and requirements for the hospital or clinic. These policies and procedures should require that the healthcare customer properly identify and then segregate, mark, bag, etc., textile products before sending to them to the laundry so that laundry workers may identify HD contaminated laundry and take necessary precautions to protect themselves from exposure. To ensure such agreements and policies are bona fide in OSHA’s eyes, laundries should conduct purposeful audits/inspections of the policies and procedures to ensure they are being followed by the healthcare customers, and then ensure documented, corrective action is taken when audit/inspection findings and/or exposure incidents have occurred. Diligent efforts to minimize employee exposure, follow industry best practices and follow up on noted deficiencies are critical steps in minimizing OSHA liability, and most importantly protecting laundry workers.”
ALM has provided these tools to help you prepare:
We encourage you to share the steps and measures your operation has/is taking to protect front-line laundry workers from undue exposure to hazardous drug contaminated textiles.
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Janice Carter Larson, CLLM, Vice President of Clinical Resources and Consulting for Encompass Group LLC, was named The International Association for Healthcare Textile Management (IAHTM) “2019 Lifetime Achievement” recipient along with John Sealey, a 40-year industry veteran who retired earlier this year as chief operating officer of London Hospital Linen Service Inc. (LHLS), London, ON, Canada. The Awards were held Tuesday, September 24, 2019 at IAHTM’s 2019 Annual Meeting and Education Conference held in Scottsdale, Arizona.
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Messe Frankfurt, Inc. has officially launched the new website for The Clean Show. The site is user-friendly and will be updated periodically with show updates and information as they are released. Be sure to save the date for the next show, June 10-13, 2021, in Atlanta, Georgia!
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 The Board of Directors of the Textile Care Allied Trades Association (TCATA) is pleased to announce that Leslie Schaeffer (left), the current President of TCATA, will become the association’s CEO effective January 1, 2020. Schaeffer owns BPS Communications, publisher of National Clothesline, and manages three regional dry cleaning and laundry association trade shows. Schaeffer replaces David Cotter, who passed away unexpectedly in August.
In a related move, Fred Schwarzmann (center), TCATA’s current President-Elect, will replace Schaeffer as the association’s President effective January 1, 2020. Schwarzmann is Chairman and CEO of the A.L. Wilson Chemical Company.
The board also promoted Office Manager Luci Ward (right) to Business Manager. Ward’s duties will include helping create a more member-driven culture, as well as supporting the goals and objectives of TCATA’s strategic plan.
The board issued a special thanks to Schaeffer, Ward and Past President Bill Odorizzi of Sankosha USA for the extraordinary work they did for the association during this transitional period.
TCATA will celebrate its 100th anniversary April 29-May 2, 2020 at its Annual Conference in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Distributors and manufacturers of dry cleaning and laundry equipment and supplies are encouraged to join the celebration.
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Gurtler Industries, Inc. has completed the first phase of a planned expansion and renovation of their South Holland, Illinois, corporate headquarters. The increase in footprint and upgrading of facilities was necessary to accommodate continued growth of the company.
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Jack Harlander has joined Braun in the position of Project Manager. Jack is a graduate of Clarkson University and holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering and Management. Most recently, Jack served as project manager for a firm specializing in bridge and highway construction services for select private and public clients. Jack also served as a project manager and system engineer for Universal Instruments in Binghamton, New York. In this capacity, Jack was responsible for managing all aspects of project execution, customer communications, technical reviews and the product acceptance process.
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