We all know the situation: towards the end of the week, the laundry bag can be literally up to its neck with dirty laundry. And that means work, combined with logistical finesse. Loading, washing, unloading, hanging up. Wash after wash – until everything is sparkling clean again. And then the real work begins: the ironing.
All this takes place on a very different scale in the professional area. This was revealed in our visit to the traditional Viennese business Rosa Toifl, the experts when it comes to clean hand towels, sheets, etc. Around 55 tons of laundry in total goes in and out of there each day. Or better put: dirty in and clean out. And that requires especially well organized work, i.e. a reliable technical solution. Getting the logistics and automation right is essential. That’s made possible by a 2D machine vision solution from SICK which sorts the laundry fully automatically. A real challenge, because the hand towels are similar but not exactly the same.
Caring for textiles for over 50 years
The company Toifl Textilpflege has dedicated itself to high quality cleaning and care of textiles of all kinds since 1954. “We set great store on careful handling, hygiene, and an immaculate appearance”, says the dyed-in-the-wool technician Jakob Müller-Hartburg, Executive Assistant at Rosa Toifl & Co. GmbH. We have a broad spectrum of customers, both in terms of textiles and industries. Our customers come, amongst other things, from hospitality, the hotel industry, or the hospital and health care sector.
Presorting, bag storage system, washing machines and dryers: the laundry goes on a journey
The processes on the four floors at Rosa Toifl are complex. The delivered laundry first needs to be transported to one of the top floors and presorted there into bags. These bags then go to a bag storage system, and at the appropriate time are automatically transported onwards into the washing machines. Once the laundry is clean again, it is transported to the dryers via a conveyor system. In the case of hand towels, these are dried fully and then unloaded automatically. Then they are folded and prepared for delivery. “All of these paths need to be ‘cleanly’ implemented, in the true sense of the word, both logistically and technically – floor by floor”, says Müller-Hartburg. Our total turnover per day is around 55 tons – an unbelievable amount of laundry that needs to be kept in motion. That’s why you see endless labyrinthine transport solutions here for transporting the laundry up and down through the building.
All in white
One of the greatest challenges is all the whiteness. Why: “The white laundry is a real challenge for automated sorting. Everything looks the same”, explains Jakob Müller-Hartburg. An efficient solution was needed – preferably fully automated. “We used to have a final location where all the laundry went to so that it could be sorted one more time before dispatch. But as the volume of orders increased, we began to run out of space to do this.”
