Utilizing Cleaning Metrics for Data-Driven Decision-Making

November 30, 2022 8:34 AM by Tennant Company

Posted in Health & Safety, Sustainability, Industry News & Trends,

Metrics matter—whether you’re a building service contractor (BSC) cleaning an expansive office, school, or retail space or have an on-site cleaning team working to make your facility shine. Without cleaning metrics, you can’t see the complete picture of your cleaning performance and operational efficiency. For instance, why did a cleaning machine break down or not clean properly? Where are all your cleaning machines, and are they being utilized to their fullest capacity? Do your facilities or EVS staff need additional training to meet cleaning standards and positively represent your brand? This is just some of the information that cleaning metrics can reveal so you can take your cleaning program to the next level.

With cleaning metrics, your organization can increase productivity, ensure cleaning consistency, reduce cleaning costs, and make more informed data-driven decisions. But what key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics should your measure? Let’s look at what metrics matter most, with some examples and have the greatest potential to improve your overall cleaning operation.

KPI 1: Productivity

Productivity is key, whether you’re running a BSC or in charge of an in-house cleaning crew. Tennant’s IRIS^® Asset Manager is used by forward-thinking cleaning organization to uncover intelligent insights that can drive cleaning performance. This machine management and monitoring technology can track productivity and whether operators are optimally using Tennant equipment. Through an intuitive and mobile-friendly interface, you can see whether equipment is underutilized, identify underperforming sites and make a data-driven decision redeploy underused cleaning machines to improve overall productivity.

KPI 2: Cleaning Consistency

If your cleaning program is underwhelming to customers and site visitors, there's a lot on the line. That's why you need to measure cleaning consistency. With IRIS, you can see the data on your entire cleaning fleet and ensure every site and every machine cleans consistently. With this technology, you can evaluate machine usage by site or machine to ensure your cleaning team meets all cleaning requirements. If you have floor scrubbers equipped with technology that transforms tap water into a cleaning solution, you'll want to know that your cleaners are using modern technology consistently.

KPI 3: Cleaning Costs

Another critical measurement is whether your cleaning equipment is used efficiently to minimize operational costs. With IRIS, you can identify user errors and optimize battery maintenance to reduce replacement costs. You’ll also know when scrubber machines are moved to another location to minimize lost assets and whether operators are consistently using technology to maximize cost savings.

Using Staffing Metrics to Transform Your Culture

The goal of many BSCs and those in charge of in-house cleaning teams is to increase productivity without causing fatigue or increasing the potential for injury for the operators. There are many variables when determining the optimal production rate because the buildings being cleaned are unique. Production rates can fluctuate due to various factors, including cleaning systems, facility type, surfaces, disruptions, weather, building use, and worker training.

Using IRIS Asset Manager, you can create benchmarks for each unique building and have a full view of what's working and what's not at the staffing level. This can be transformational for your organization's culture and your cleaning teams' productivity. You can make informed decisions about reducing the task frequency, eliminating the task, mechanizing the task, improving the process or introducing product innovation. If specific sites are underperforming, you can use the technology to make informed decisions to provide additional training or formalize best cleaning practices.

IRIS Asset Manager in Action

In a pilot study with a national facility services company, IRIS Asset Manager delivered tangible results. Managing more than one million square feet of space, this large national cleaning company wanted to see a big-picture view of how its hundreds of sites and thousands of Tennant cleaning machines were performing.

In addition to a wide range of cleaning metrics the company hoped to uncover, it also wanted to find opportunities to boost productivity and ensure their operators were using Tennant cleaning technology properly. If not, it would provide additional training to increase productivity.

The company's operations manager used IRIS technology to identify a site where a machine wasn't being used consistently to meet cleaning standards. A few minutes of operator training resolved the issue. At another site, low usage data from IRIS helped identify a machine that needed service—which reduced unexpected downtime.

Following the successful pilot, the company decided to add IRIS technology to its Tennant fleets at the national level. Now, the company has a centralized IRIS intelligent command center to drive consistent cleaning performance, increased operational efficiency and productivity, and lower cost-to-clean across its entire national operations.

For information to improve your cleaning performance, contact us!

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