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Data - how to succeed?
25th of May 2018An increasing number of companies are investing in data-driven solutions. But some are failing to fully act on the intelligence they gain – which means they are also missing out on much of the value. Essity’s director of European business development Paul Church explains how a clear-sighted vision of the benefits of data can successfully take cleaning to the next level.
Data-driven cleaning, intelligent solutions, the Internet of Things – these have all become industry buzzwords over the past few years. An increasing number of cleaning and facilities management companies have begun generating data or linking in to software companies that can help them to do so. The intelligence mountain is growing fast – but how many of us actually know how to scale it?
Generating data without fully understanding the problems one is trying to solve makes no sense. IoT solutions require a significant level of investment in order to ensure they will work effectively. So the only way to justify a data-driven cleaning solution is to clarify the customer’s problems and to clearly demonstrate how these can be solved using IoT.
This has always been Essity’s own approach. After extensive conversations with facility management customers we have identified seven key problems that they face in the field of building cleaning. These are:
1. Difficulties in optimising cleaning
In a large facility it is hard to tell which areas are likely to need attention when. An airport, for example, will be serviced by a team of cleaners with each given responsibility for a designated area. These cleaners may be tasked with completing their round, say, 10 times a day - but some rounds may only need cleaning once or twice while others may require attention 20 times. So managers struggle to optimise their labour force and deploy staff when and where they are needed.
2. Some tasks will be neglected
Cleaners will always find that some tasks fall through the cracks due to the pressures involved with completing their rounds. This will lead to unsatisfactory results and possibly also complaints from building users.
3. Understanding consumption needs
Attempting to predict product consumption is always difficult. However, facility managers need to estimate how quickly products such as soap, toilet tissue and hand towels are likely to be used up in order to avoid running out of supplies. They also need to predict the quantities of each product that will be required on the cleaner’s trolley to avoid any inefficient repetition of journeys that will push up labour costs.
4. Keeping staff motivated
Cleaning can be repetitive, tiring and frustrating and this can result in poor employee engagement and low morale. Facility managers find it hard to motivate their staff which makes problems such as absenteeism and high staff turnover fairly common. Low staff engagement and high levels of absenteeism lead to poor cleaning results – and this could be a problem when the FM company comes to negotiate a new contract.
5. Empty dispensers and untidy washrooms
Refilling washroom dispensers is a time-consuming business. In a ladies’ washroom with 10 cubicles, for example, the cleaner will have to wait for every cubicle to be empty before being able to check the toilet tissue supplies in each one. Cleaners will also be expected to respond swiftly when a mess occurs. But such incidents are difficult to predict and any delay in addressing them may lead to complaints from washroom users and from unsatisfied customers.
6. Too much firefighting required
Cleaning staff often feel the need to be everywhere at once as they deal with complaints, product run-outs, messy washrooms and spills. This means they are always on the back foot, fighting
fires and are never fully in control of their work situation.
7. Not knowing what is going on in the building
Managers find it difficult to gain a complete overview of a building’s ever-changing cleaning needs, particularly since it is hard to ascertain where each member of staff will be at any given point. This leads to a lack of control on the part of the management.
Until now, large facilities have been serviced by cleaners who will simply repeat their rounds over and over again, regardless of requirements. In some cases this leads to over-cleaning – which is an inefficient use of resources – or under-cleaning, which may lead to complaints.
Washroom sensors
In 2014 Essity launched Tork EasyCube in a bid to solve some of these problems. The system initially took the form of sensors placed inside washroom dispensers that uploaded refill data to the internet. Cleaning staff could access this information via a smartphone or tablet and be alerted when a dispenser needed refilling. Alerts are given via a traffic light system whereby green indicates a full dispenser; orange means it is nearly empty and red is empty.
Tork EasyCube addressed problems Three and Five: those of consumption control and empty dispensers. We then offered the further option of sensors that could be placed on cubicle doors. These allowed staff to tell which washrooms were attracting the heaviest usage, alerting operatives to situations where extra cleaning may be required. This helped to reduce the amount of firefighting required, addressing problem number six.
Then we realised that the scope of our solution could be widened still further. Tork is strongly associated with washroom hygiene solutions, but why limit Tork EasyCube to the washroom? Why not expand it to address other cleaning problems facing the facilities manager?
So with our growing understanding of the industry’s needs this is exactly what we now do.
When we sign up a new customer we digitise their entire building, mapping out each room and placing sensors in areas where they are likely to be needed most such as in meeting rooms, corridors, break rooms and thresholds. These monitor traffic continually: for example if a threshold is set to 100 visitors it will send the cleaner an orange alert when 90 people have been counted followed by a red alert when the 100th visitor has triggered the sensor.
Suddenly we are able to monitor a building’s usage much more closely and ensure that fewer jobs fall through the cracks, effectively solving problem two.
The Tork EasyCube application includes a two-way communications channel that allows the manager to contact a cleaner when a spill or a cleaning crisis occurs. This also enables managers to create reports based on daily patterns and to set clear cleaning targets. Once the facility manager can anticipate needs they will gain a greater understanding of what is going on in the building. Problems one and seven: check.
And problem four – that of keeping staff motivated – has been an unexpected by-product of Tork EasyCube. The system removes many of the stresses of the job and enables cleaners to concentrate on important tasks instead of pointlessly repeating their cleaning round or waiting to be able to manually check washroom dispenser levels. Now they have real-time data at their fingertips via a tablet or smartphone and this puts them in control of their working lives. According to customer feedback the system provides cleaners with a sense of empowerment, boosting their morale and increasing their job satisfaction.
Facilities services
Building cleaning is only one part of a facility manager’s brief. Other areas include everything from security and catering to car parks, landscaping, plant management and rodent control. But data-driven solutions can address problems in other areas of the facility as well.
For example, office coffee machines can be refilled more promptly when they contain connected sensors that alert staff when they are empty. Similarly, pot plants will no longer be neglected when the pots are fitted with sensors that remind operatives when they need watering. And much less time will be wasted hunting around for an empty meeting room in an office where “smart” rooms inform employees remotely when they are occupied.
Data-driven cleaning is not ideal in every situation, of course. It would be unnecessary and expensive in a small organisation, for example – particularly one where no specific problems had been identified. But smart solutions can work spectacularly well in large, very busy facilities that are spread out over a wide geographical area and where factors such as quality, hygiene and hospitality are important.
Everyone is talking about data-driven cleaning but few companies have actually rolled it out to customers. The concept was virtually unknown when we first launched Tork EasyCube on to the market at Interclean Amsterdam 2014. And frankly, it took a little time to persuade customers to come on board. But it is now growing rapidly and we are signing up a new customer each week, clients that include major airports, railway stations, retail concepts, theme parks, hospitals, stadiums and upmarket office buildings across Europe and the US.
Understanding needs
We have recently become a global partner of Microsoft and this enables us to leverage the software giant’s Azure platform, allowing us to link in to Microsoft operating systems on workplace computers everywhere. Microsoft believes our offering to be unique – as we do - and our goal is to become the market leader in FM cleaning solutions.
Our core business remains washroom hygiene and we started out with a washroom dispenser refill solution for our customers. But by working closely with facility managers and by gaining a greater understanding of their needs we discovered that the problems we could solve were actually much greater than we realised. And some of the outcomes – such as those concerning staff motivation – were actually better than we had anticipated.
Understanding customer needs and targeting their problems is the only way to succeed in data-driven cleaning. So far, we at Essity have merely scratched the surface. But as our knowledge and capability grows, so will the solutions that our company – and that our industry as a whole - can provide.