CHINA
Laundry company Fornet established one of Asia’s most modern laundries in Shanghai, China, in 2015, handling more than 10,000 pieces of garments each day for both laundry and cleaning. Such a significant volume needed extra attention from the beginning and general manager Ms Zhu Lijun was aware that automation could play a part of the solution.
The company turned to Inwatec, the Danish-based company that develops machines for industrial laundries. The latest case study on the Inwatec site examines how Fornet approached Inwatec.
“We had identified the problem of emptying the pockets of 10,000 pieces of garments a day, and we realised that it was a hurdle that we needed to solve,” said Ms Zhu Lijun. “I had read about Inwatec’s x-ray machine on the internet, and after a short dialogue, I went to Denmark to see the x-ray scanner in action on a Denmark laundry facility.”
The setup in Shanghai that includes both x-ray scan of the garment and RFID-based sorting has now been running for more than a year. “Apart from helping us emptying the pockets, the setup also sorts the garments into nine different categories to pick the right washing or cleaning processes. In that part of the equation, there is no doubt that the machine makes fewer errors than a human would do, and the speed is also higher and with fewer stops than a person could handle.”
Ms Zhu Lijun had no worries choosing a Danish setup for the laundry in Shanghai. “We have had very few issues so far, and when the line stops for some reason, we have solved it online without problems. It hasn’t been that complicated.”
