Quality optimization in the hospital laundry service: an application case

In industrial installations, the Taguchi methodology has come to play an important role in recent years in the achievement of improvements in quality objectives. This article presents the experiences and results obtained in the installations of a hospital laundry, where the aim was to minimize operating costs while guaranteeing standards of disinfection and the quality of the wash. Owing to the multiple quality objectives that this type of problem presents, it was necessary to define a hierarchy of criteria to optimize. Thanks to the application of these techniques, an improvement was achieved in the bacteriological quality offered at the same time as reducing operating costs, thus demonstrating the importance of the use of this methodology in the solution of quality operating problems.