News & Innovations

Thinking Big – With an Eye for Detail

The roots of Frey Textilreinigung GmbH in Burgau can be traced back over 160 years. “My brother and I learned from the ground up what it means to run a laundry company, with all its different aspects. We grew up with it, and we know how stability, continuity, and growth work in a business, and what makes the soul of a company,” says Katrin Frey. The values of quality, continuity, innovation, and vision, not to mention personal support and customer focus are not only emphasized at the company’s Burgau site – they are brought to life.

Thinking Big – With an Eye for Detail at All Times
Albert Frey is proud to say: “We learned from our father that bravery gets results. He was a logical man and used his straightforwardness to run the Frey company. He always thought big, but never forgot about little details.”

The Frey laundry company is now divided into multiple areas and offers its customers extremely flexible services, ranging from clothing rental to complete service packages, which it provides with a selection of individual textiles for all lines of business. Especially in the catering and hotel sectors, Frey ensures that it offers its customers top-quality individual laundry services.

There are three cornerstones in the area of flat textiles and garments: washing and preparing flat textiles from hotels and restaurants, the hospital sector, including rehab centers, and retirement homes and care homes. Particular attention is paid to how personal laundry (underwear) belonging to the residents of the homes is treated, as this is extremely sensitive and varied.

“Our father started the professional clothing rental area of the business, among other things, in 1994 under the name DRESS-Line. In this area, too, we coordinate closely with the customers to produce individually tailored concepts and offers,” explains Katrin Frey. DRESS-Line, headquartered in Ettlingen, Germany, now includes 12 owner-managed laundries (www.dressline.de). Frey is also a member company of the Sitex Group, headquartered in Minden, Germany – a network of family-run laundries in Germany (www.sitex-gruppe.de).

Greater automation is needed to be able to manage this variety in day-to-day business. Processing items of laundry belonging to over 1000 customers, totaling 38 ton/83,775 lbs. every day, in a production area of over 6500 m²/69,965 sq.ft, requires optimal organization. In the project consultation with JENSEN’s sales team and Inwatec, Katrin and Albert Frey decided on an automatic storage system for laundry stacks, which is specially adapted to the needs of the Frey laundry company, and on a high-performance VORTEX mat roller from Inwatec.

Automatic, Individual Storage System for Stacking Laundry
Their decision to purchase the Inwatec GREIT Stack Storage & Pack-Out storage system shows that the brother and sister team Katrin and Albert Frey are open to innovation. The automatic storage system for stacked items, GREIT, consists of modules that can be used to create unique configurations that are perfect for every particular application.

The system has recently been installed at Frey Textilreinigung GmbH in Burgau, Germany, and is in use for providing and picking laundry for hospitals, retirement homes, and care homes. It functions as a buffer between the folder and the logistics area, and automatically stores and transports stacked items of laundry. This is the perfect solution for the Frey laundry company in order to automatically store flat textiles, thereby ensuring improved hygiene, as it means that the stacks of laundry have fewer points of contact. The system's software provides the Frey laundry company with the best possible support in the production planning stage. For example, it can show the store level at any time.

The transport belts and lifts of the storage system receive the clean stacks of laundry fully automatically and sort them by type at incredible speed, placing them in a storage location from one of the eight levels and four rows. This smart solution thus does away with the time-consuming manual process using laundry carts before actually packing the items for delivery. By using the software connection that is already available on the system for packing lists, the laundry personnel can choose which delivery should be called up from the system. The conveyor belt then begins collecting the clean stacks of laundry and delivers them straight to the output station, ready for delivery to the customers.

All-Round Performance With the VORTEX
In fluid mechanics, a vortex is defined as a rotating motion of fluids around a straight or curved axis of rotation. The mat-rolling machine works according to this principle and has a return-to-operator layout; it therefore ensures an enormous increase in productivity.

The patented “roll-over” feature enables the user to roll the next mat, even while the current mat is still being rolled. This unique function optimizes the user's working process, ensures a consistent workload, and eliminates waiting times. The mats are rolled up compactly, meaning that they can be stored efficiently. The highly efficient machine has an extremely small installation surface and is therefore easy to integrate into existing industrial laundries. The VORTEX mat rolling machine is equipped with a safety light curtain and designed for the greatest possible work safety. Using the machine, it is possible to roll up to 400 mats per hour, depending on the experience of the operator and the size and provision of the mats.

The goals set out by the Frey laundry company are achieved by both Inwatec and JENSEN: an increase in productivity through designing the future of laundry automation. The next upcoming project is to automate the sorting of the dirty flat textiles. Sales Manager Rudolf Hofer is delighted with the confidence shown in them and the chance to work with the Frey laundry company and Inwatec again.

“Frey sets itself apart as a growing family-run company that is open to innovation,” say Katrin and Albert Frey. “We have put this into practice once again with our new machines from Inwatec and JENSEN.”