Cleanest of the clean.(SOLUTIONS IN PRACTICE)

It's been said that cleanliness is next to godliness, and at a Cintas Corp. facility in Westland, Mich., that's just about creed. The company, based in Cincinnati, specializes in corporate identity uniforms, providing services to businesses throughout North America. Cintas designs, manufactures and implements corporate identity uniform programs and provides entrance mats, restroom supplies, promotional products, first aid and safety products, fire protection services and document management services to approximately 800,000 businesses. In addition to laundry services, Cintas nationally supplies more than 10,000 clean room products for sterile and non-sterile environments.

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In September 2008, Cintas Corp. opened a clean room laundry facility in its Detroit suburb. The 4,000-square-foot complex is equipped with process isolation control that allows for the simultaneous, linear batch lot flow of clean room garments. It employs stringent processing controls to ensure that garments are sterilized to a level 1,000 times greater than that of Cintas' competitors. A certified contamination and quality control technician, dedicated quality assurance managers and microscopists are always on site.

It should be easy to understand that this facility doesn't operate like the run-of-the-mill washer and dryer found in homes and Laundromats. It's a highpowered series of phases designed to practically remold soiled uniforms from "used" to "brand new." And the industries that urgently depend on companies like Cintas make up a long, growing list. Companies that work with semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and nanotechnology--all working with small, delicate materials that require perfect conditioning--depend on Cintas to ensure that their work environments are free of even the smallest substances that could cause extraordinary problems or malfunctions with their products or machinery.

"It's like those Intel commercials where they all come out and they're wearing bubblehead hoods and suits covering them from head-to-toe," said Jan Eudy, corporate quality assurance manager for Cintas. "That is a significant portion of the clean room garment industry."

Many industries must keep a level of cleanliness or sterilization enforced by international industry regulations or internal standards. In the pharmaceutical industry, Eudy said garments have to be terminally sterilized by gamma radiation before workers go into sterile clean rooms where they make vaccines or other drugs. Another industry that is developing a greater need for Cintas services is the nanotechnology industry, where they're often creating smart drugs and smart devices made of elements that require rooms that are free of contaminants. The precision of laundry services at the Michigan complex cleans uniforms of material on a microscopic level, almost as small as much of the technology the company's clients are trying to create.

Strategic approach

Cintas' state-of-the-art Michigan facility is one of five operating in the United States with approximately 70 employees on staff. The other four facilities maintain around 100 employees in Newburgh, N.Y., 50 in San Jose, Calif, and 30 each at facilities in Greenville, S.C., and Round Rock, Texas--all areas where numerous industries that require clean room laundry services occupy local business sectors.

"It's based on how many customers we have--it's based on volumes," Eudy said. "They're strategically located to support the various industries in the area. Round Rock, near Austin, was primarily for semiconductor companies. The city was once known as the 'Silicon Valley of the South' for the semiconductors. San Jose was built to service the original Silicon Valley area, from Southern California all the way up to Washington."

The Westland location was built to facilitate two roles, Eudy said. The Newburgh, N.Y., facility was over capacity, and the Midwest region, which included Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, was an especially fast-growing market for Cintas. Until the Michigan plant began operating in 2008, the New York volume was being trucked back and forth to the Midwest. The new facility has helped release stress and volume overload from the New York complex.

"We're seeing more and more technology being displaced by the absence of automotive work, and it appeared that we could place ourselves a little higher on the technological scale," said Gregg Remer, Cintas' field engineer for its Midwest region. "Typically, laundry isn't too scientific, but in a clean room it absolutely becomes scientific."

Most other industries would find the construction of a new plant or facility to be simple with regard to the materials used to build it. Remer said he and his team spent several weeks using AutoCAD to refine a nice straight linear process for the Michigan facility, but when it comes to clean room laundry, everything must be considered to the finest detail from the paint on walls and ceilings to the lights and temperature.

"Typically, you could go pick out anything you want for construction, but for a clean room everything has to be analyzed by a whole bureaucracy of folks making the decision whether it will be allowable in that room," Remer said. "In the end, when you start to do your validation of the project to prove that it's going to hit its cleanliness requirements, one bad product could possibly ruin your results and all of your efforts."

Any building component, he said, had to be tightly scrutinized to prove that it doesn't have the potential to outgas or shed. For example, once a particular paint is selected, the approval process starts to go through company officials in charge of engineering, architecture and any other department involved in the project to see if anyone can find reason to reject its use.

"Even stainless steel itself, as clean as it is, needs to be electropolished," Remer said. "The drum of every dryer ... every contact surface has to be electropolished. It's a very expensive, heavily scrutinized process and is often driven by the budget."

Fresh start

Though Cintas had already built four functioning clean room laundry facilities, the company did consider ways to create a new model for future facilities or renovation plans among its older sites through the Michigan complex. German-made fan filter units were added to create a more efficient and cleaner air system, which Remer said helps in improving overall cleanliness. Specially made fluorescent lighting was also added to enhance facility lighting without altering or harming any of its customers' materials. And a new quality management system has also been implemented to ensure quality processes and protocol are followed throughout the business, while the facility's infrastructure and supporting utilities are designed to accommodate future growth.

Remer said a special element of the Michigan facility was the addition of an automated packaging system, one he considers to be the most superior in the clean room laundry industry. After garments are inspected for cleanliness as well as rips, stains or tears that would compromise the clothing integrity, they are compressed, wrapped and sorted by size and customer to be shipped back for reuse. Eudy said she believes Cintas' system ultimately focuses on its better-quality cleanliness, packaging and overall attention to detail, an observation reflected by customer feedback.

"When I was at the Westland facility [in January], the general manager in the past three months had visited the customers that were transferred from New York to the Westland facility," she said. "One of the customers presented him with their supplier review and went through each category, with a total score of 95 out of 100. We have had a really high customer satisfaction index with all of the customers that have been transferred because of the state-of-the-art laundry."

The Michigan complex, Eudy added, may become the standard for future clean room laundry complexes both in and outside the U.S. Its current processing volume stands at approximately 100,000 garment items per week with a projected volume at capacity to be near 300,000 garment items per week. Upcoming plans for a renovation at the New York facility, she said, may draw from the early impact made by Cintas' newest creation.

And Remer, like any engineer in charge of facility design, sighs in the elation of a job well-done. "It was completed--from demolition when we bought the building--inside of 10 months. It basically came in on time and under budget, so I'm pretty proud of that."

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