Cleaning Cost Reduction Through Simple Innovations

“Once we rid ourselves of traditional thinking we can get on with creating the future.”
— James Bertrand

When it comes to cost-cutting and saving, the trickiest part is to measure efficiency. Take your largest expenditures over a period of time (36, 60 month) then take into account your capital equipment and consumables expenses and long term cost, debts and savings. From energy usage, labor, materials, and equipment. But if you can look for hidden value in existing innovations — even the simplest transformation can provide ways to cut cost. These key things you need to keep in mind when selecting new ways of operating your business towards cost efficiency:

Use Eco-Friendly Equipment

Every eco-smart equipment would advocate for less energy and less chemicals. The less you use them, the more money you can save, the more your business is efficient. Electricity, gas, fuel — cutting these renewable resources will also help to cut carbon dioxide and greenhouse emissions. Take example of cordless equipment with renewable energy that will surely save time, effort, energy, and increase efficiency.

Ensure the good eco-friendly product must substantially reduce waste or environmental footprint compared with traditional method. It should also include green cleaning agents, low water usage, as well as the use of microfiber, a reusable cloth that replace wasteful paper towels that required cutting of trees and waste disposal.

Control Workforce Expenses

Many of accommodation businesses would spend money on hiring many low-paid workforces, and end up having big spending on wages. The fear of adapting automations may still exist within conservative businesses, however, this is the time we think about cost efficiency. Automated floor cleaners should have been able to fill the void – while these robots can automatically clean areas by themselves, cleaners may find time to focus on other value-added tasks. The more you automate, the more possibility for you to save time, and time is money. Instead of paying 500$ for 5 cleaner in one day that takes 5 hours of cleaning with no visible result, you can instead invest a few dollars a day on better equipment that will enable less cleaner more task.

Control Spending

In every business, there is always a way to find about 10-20% spending that has not been managed closely. In the cleaning department for example, you can find enormous amount of spending on chemical uses and other unnecessary supplies. Reducing these excessive inventory will help you not only to reduce waste and spoilage but also to encourage your staff to improve their skills in managing resources in hand.

Improve Management

According to a study, most of the housekeeping inefficiency happened within the job workflow system. Housekeepers would spend 10-20% of their time trying to find the next room to clean. With all the recent technologies and project management tools around the market, we should have been able to find the right solution that will help productivity and efficiency. Throw away walkie-talkies – maid should have been able to communicate and find out their next task quickly through smartphones.

On another note, you also need to ensure that time is not wasted for idle activities. Save money by flexible scheduling that allows everyone to be more efficient, such as doing the other important job while the main activity is low.

Don’t Underspend

Perhaps your ready to innovate however, you and your directors are not willing to spend on technology. Cost-reducing in cleaning is not solely about budget spending, but also about valuing sustainability and quality of your cleaning supplies and equipment. Think of longer term impact: if purchasing a machine at $8 a day could save time in cleaning up to an hour as much as it could save labor expenses, how much can you actually save in one year? What is the hourly cost of your labour?

Educate Your Staffs On Your Effort

One of the very crucial part of your new objective is to ensure that all staffs are alert, well-informed and well-aware of your effort. There is nothing worse within innovations than bad communications, bad awareness, and lack of understanding within the system. Spend extra time to ensure everyone fully understand your cost-saving objective and know what the staffs can do to help.

 

Using Technology to Drive Growth and Innovation

It’s something we hear every day; technology continues to change and improve our lives. Yet, many of us continue to miss the benefits of technology, unable to interpret the long-term benefits or understand how to implement or use efficiently.

But once we understand how technology can link into day-to-day operations and progression of our activities, it can reduce costs and improve human productivity.

From data-driven tools to smart equipment that can automate cleaning processes, here are some well-known technologies that are yet to find their place within many businesses.

Automation and robotics

Automation has been around for quite a while although people still challenge its capability, with slower adoption noted in conservative industries and organisations.

In every commercial operation, daily cleaning procedures are an important part of business, but labour intensive, repetitive tasks are always subject to human error.

Now is the time to start automating menial routines and repetitive cleaning tasks by passing on these responsibilities to robotic machines.

While robots autonomously clean, cleaners now have time to focus on more complex tasks in the environment. The more a business automates, the more possibility you gain to improve human productivity, reduce labour costs and save time.

This productivity was shown in a recent client case study, where a cleaner deployed deploys a fleet of four floor cleaning robots to clean four different large complex areas.

While the client cleaned a complex bathroom environment, one hour later, the client returned to the robots that had completed four hours’ worth of labour.

The robots are capable to clean 100 per cent of the area without missing a speck of dust, as well as accessing difficult corners that are not reachable by a human with a vacuum cleaner.

Management can also view the cleaning progress in real time or view the robots’ routes log from any devices.

This takes cleaning task management to a new level. Never before could you validate cleaning, but now, smart tracking technology capability can show what’s been cleaned and what’s been missed.

 Smart management systems

Smart devices, including Internet of Things (IoT) devices enable us to leverage efficiency when completing smaller tasks that often cost time.

Today there are smart rubbish bins that can monitor the levels of rubbish in the bin. Some bins can even compact rubbish and notify management when it needs to be emptied, saving valuable time and energy. Smart IoT devices in commercial buildings will soon become a norm.

Many organisations are still comfortable with manual pen and paper report management for several reasons, including an inability to adapt to new digital systems, the size of an organisation and the number of employees.

Adapting to a new system might be a daunting process to begin with but investing in it will improve efficiency for the long-term.

Imagine if staff and other related users were connected throughout the day, able to view the progress of cleaning and notify hygiene and disinfection control within rooms. Maps of rooms and buildings can be updated in real-time, displaying detailed day-to-day planning of cleaning activities.

Cleaning staff can report back on completed tasks using comments and photos. These management systems may take a while to get everyone used to it, but give it time and you will save.

The new generation of automated cleaning machines are also equipped with similar technology. This innovation comes with real-time monitoring and tracking systems to ensure the job is done and performance is measurable.

Adapting to this system can increase efficiency in cleaning and maintenance equipment, and operators can easily track how long a machine has been used with thorough information about maintenance schedules, equipment security, battery and motor performance, as well as service deadlines.

This information can be accessed remotely from any PC, table, or smartphone and also includes easy-to-follow on-site training video links.

Cordless machinery

Cordless machines have been around for many years, but since not all machines are as durable as the corded ones, cordless could not become as trustworthy as its opponent.

These machines do not need electric supply and often obtain energy from renewable batteries. They do not restrict movement, providing the freedom required to move around corners easily. Since they are usually lightweight, cleaners can clean more efficiently.

To make sure this innovation is worth investing in, operators need to understand that cordless cleaners are engineered to leverage efficiency in daily routines, and are not necessarily applicable for monthly deep cleaning. Ensure you choose a machine that is well constructed, versatile, and acoustically engineered to the environment it will be used in.

Eco-friendly machinery

Eco-friendly machines are one of the best innovations of all time. Eco-smart equipment decreases energy and chemical use, providing for a more sustainable future.

Cutting electricity, gas or fuel also means cutting carbon dioxide and greenhouse emissions. And the less you use energy and chemicals, the more money you can save.

However, operators should ensure the eco-friendly product must substantially reduce its environmental footprint compared with traditional method. It should also include green cleaning agents, low water usage, as well as the use of microfibre.

This article first appeared in the July/August issue of INCLEAN magazine.