BryanLGH Medical Center’s dish room flunked its physical. The medical center serves 4,000 meals a day to patients, visitors, physicians and children who are enrolled in the facility’s daycare program.

Bryan LGH Medical Center Case Study

Feeding these individuals was not a problem; however, cleaning up after them was a different story.

BryanLGH (Lincoln, Neb.) is a not-for-profit, locally owned healthcare organization with two acute-care facilities (550 beds total) and several outpatient clinics. Its national award-winning care includes the areas of cardiology, orthopedics, trauma, neuroscience, mental health, women’s health and oncology.

Dean Young, director of nutrition and dining services at the medical center, decided to renovate the facility’s 40-year-old dish room to create a more efficient cleaning operation.

Young also wanted to update the dish room to be more efficient. The medical center, on the east site, has one full-service cafeteria and one compact café operation. Both operations handle patient trays from selected areas and service both guest and staff trays. However, the cafeteria dish room, where the renovation occurred, is the major location for cleanup and the plaza café features a much smaller dish room operation. Since these retail foodservice outlets are far apart, patient trays and china had to be transported a long distance to the café dish room (and back) three times a day during the renovation process.

This process, combined with the large amount of patient and cafeteria trays, led to bottlenecks, increased labor and an overall inefficient dish-room operation.

New Flight-Type and Aerowerks Soiled Tray Handling System
Centerpieces of Renovation

At the heart of the dish room was a flight-type warewasher purchased in 1991. Young wanted to upgrade the warewasher to a new model to take advantage of better technology and energy-saving enhancements. He opted for Hobart’s FT900 Flight-Type Warewasher, since it is one of the most energy- and water-efficient warewashers in the industry.

To further simplify and expedite tray and ware cleaning, he incorporated an Aerowerks Tray Accumulator with a Soiled Tray Handling System. This design can accumulate up to five times more volume of cafeteria trays in the same space compared to a conventional belt conveyor system while also providing an ergonomic and efficient centralized scrapping table for both patient and cafeteria trays.

Young also redesigned the interior of the dish room to allow for more space and provide easier access to the warewasher and cleaning stations.

Numerous Benefits Include $15,000 Energy
and Water Saving

The renovation has done more than just simplify dish cleaning. The FT900 consumes 50 percent less water and 50 percent fewer chemical agents compared to the medical center’s previous warewasher.

The medical center stands to save up to $15,000 a year in utility costs due to reduced rinse water and energy use. Furthermore, foodservice employees no longer have to be in the dish room at the beginning of service hours to clean trays. They can turn on the accumulator and let it automatically collect trays for up to an hour. This feature has saved the medical center an hour or more of labor every day.

The FT900 warewasher cleans and dries ware and trays more efficiently than the medical center’s previous warewasher. This design alleviates the need for separate drying racks that can take up valuable space. The scrapping table utilizes vertical space, and the upper rack conveyor accumulates and automatically loads dish racks into the FT900. Plate wares are scrapped and accumulated on a lower level conveyor, which feed directly to the load operator. This design improves the ergonomics of employee movement by enabling heavy soiled racks to load automatically. Plate and rack wares run through the FT900 in separate batches, making it easy to unload racked items before plate wares. Empty trays slide directly onto a tray lowerator cart, and when it’s full, employees can roll the cart a few feet to the opening of the warewasher for loading.

“One of the key benefits of the integrated design is that we can run the FT900 warewasher only as needed and stage soiled ware until we have a full load,” says Young. “Plus, the FT900 is easier to operate, easier to clean and easier to service than our previous warewasher.”

Prior to the renovation, foodservice staff had to process café trays and patient trays at the same time, which often caused a bottleneck. The new setup enables foodservice staff to store the cafeteria trays on the accumulator so they can attend to patient meal carts as they return. Now, dish-room operators can receive trays, scrap, and sort and accumulate the ware to the warewasher, all at one station. The new setup provides space to stage up to six returning patient tray carts at a time. One person can unload the trays from carts or the accumulator or both just by pivoting.

“It’s always a pleasure to incorporate equipment that takes care of our production and service needs, but at the same time, pleases the people who have to run it on a daily basis,” says Young.

Learn more about the benefits BryanLGH Medical Center experienced using the FT900 warewasher and Aerowerks Soiled Tray Handling System.

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