Chef whites in the wrong size, with someone else's name
A restaurant group rents chef whites from you. Each chef has several jackets with their name on the chest, and each week soiled jackets go in a bag and clean ones come back on hangers. This week the head chef has two jackets that belong to a commis who left in the spring, and her own are nowhere.
A factory account has technicians in overalls, each with an issued set. The soiled bag contains twenty overalls; the clean return has twenty overalls, but three are the wrong size and one belongs to a different site.
When a new starter joins, someone phones to order their set. When someone leaves, nobody tells you, and their garments stay in circulation, washed and delivered for a person who is no longer there.
Care homes and hospitality groups with high staff turnover have it worst. Every month brings a handful of starters and leavers, and each one is a small admin job that gets done late or not at all.
Workwear is counted like flat linen
Many laundries treat workwear as another bag to count. The count matches, the delivery goes out. The individual garments and the individual wearers are not tracked.
- Garments are identified by name tapes or embroidery, read by eye.
- Sizes are not recorded against wearers, so the wrong size goes back.
- Starters and leavers are handled by phone and email, often late.
- Garments for different sites of the same customer get mixed.
- Lost garments are replaced without anyone knowing where they went.
Replacement costs and irritated staff
Named garments that go astray have to be replaced and often re-embroidered. Wearers who get the wrong size or someone else's jacket blame the laundry, and the customer's manager hears about it. Garments issued to leavers keep being laundered and delivered, which costs you processing and costs the customer money if they are charged per garment.
How we build wearer-level workwear tracking
- Each wearer is recorded with their customer, site, department, sizes and issued garment count.
- Each garment gets a code: a heat-seal barcode, a sewn-in label, or an RFID tag where volumes justify it. The code links to the wearer.
- Soiled garments are scanned in at sorting, so you know exactly whose garments came back and whose did not.
- At packing, garments are scanned into the wearer's bundle or locker slot. A garment in the wrong bundle is flagged before dispatch.
- Customers add starters and mark leavers through a simple form. Leavers' garments are flagged for recovery when they next come in.
- Reports show garments not returned for several cycles by wearer, so losses can be raised with the customer while they are recent.
| Event | Today | With wearer tracking |
|---|---|---|
| New chef starts | Phone call, set sent eventually | Starter form, set issued and recorded |
| Chef leaves | Nobody tells you | Leaver form, garments recovered |
| Wrong size returned | Found by the wearer | Flagged at packing |
| Jacket missing for weeks | Not noticed | Not-returned report by wearer |
Where your laundry management system already supports garment tracking, we help set it up and fill the gaps, such as the starter and leaver form, rather than adding a second system.
The right jacket on the right hook
Each week the head chef's jackets come back to her, in her size, with her name. New starters have their sets from day one. Leavers' garments come back to you instead of disappearing. When the customer asks why they are being charged for a garment, you can show the scan history.
Signs your workwear needs this
- Named garments come back to the wrong wearer.
- Sizes are wrong in returned bundles.
- Leavers' garments are still being laundered.
- Starters wait for their sets because the request got lost.
- You replace workwear without knowing where it went.