The Order of St John Care Trust turns to Miele to help streamline its approach to laundry servicing
With over 3500 residents and tenants across 60 locations, OSJCT are committed to providing the best possible care for some of the most vulnerable people in society. Laundry processes are an important part of delivering this care to prevent the spread of infection within each care home and ensure items such as clothing, bedding, and towels are cleaned both thoroughly and hygienically.
As a long-time customer of Miele, Dennis Markey, development director at The Order of St John, wanted to adopt a streamlined approach to laundry servicing throughout the entirety of the Trust’s homes. “When laundry equipment breaks down in a care home, it really affects the day-to-day running of the home; so, across the Trust this was a high priority.
“For more consistency, we wanted one service contract that could support all our sites across the country and maintain them, rather than with multiple partners. That way, we would only have one point of contact, resulting in easier communication”.
Miele Professional and OSJCT worked together to build a strategy that would centralise the management of laundry services, with the aim of reducing breakdowns and improving the first-time fix rate on machines.
Speaking of the collaboration, Nicola Whittaker, national account manager at Miele Professional said: “It has been a great success. First-time fix rates have increased to over 92% and The Trust now has greater transparency of costs and usage. As part of the project, we also streamlined the range of equipment used by the Trust to Miele equipment. This is beneficial for several reasons as it not only allows staff to become more familiar with equipment when moving across the Trust, but also speeds up the replacement of distress purchases whilst allowing the Miele Professional service team and partners to carry more of the correct parts”.
On the topic of costs, Nicola added: “Within one year, we helped The Order of St John save over 10 times what they projected, thanks to the reduction of breakdowns in their laundry machines. This means they can now forecast their budget for the foreseeable based on the cost of Miele washers and dryers”.
OSJCT has also experienced other benefits since streamlining its laundry management, from less time and pressure on staff enabling them to focus more time on residents through to upholding the high levels of quality care it prides itself on. The partnership is set to continue and expand in the long term, with the strategy implemented into any new care homes the trust opens in the future.
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