Transit hubs are often the first impression that travelers have of any city they visit and are designed to showcase the best of what the area has to offer. Whether it be brightly lit, high-tech spaces to showcase one of San Francisco’s leading industries or elaborate marble columns and statues to celebrate Philadelphia’s storied past, airports and train stations are meant to make a strong first impression.
That being said, one area that any traveler dreads is using the public restroom at one of these transit hubs. After all, who wants to start their trip by going to an often poorly maintained facility that likely lacks soap, toilet paper or both? But what if transit hub administrators could easily upgrade visitors’ experiences by leveraging real-time data that can help janitorial staff increase efficiency and meet travelers’ needs without necessarily increasing the number of employees that serve the facility?
Transportation center staff have a variety of responsibilities ranging from scheduled cleanings to addressing emergency clean up needs to ensuring that facilities are properly stocked with hand towels, toilet paper and soap. In addition, these responsibilities are made more difficult with the size of the facilities they manage as well as the high volume of visitors. Tork, an SCA brand, has created Tork EasyCube, a smart washroom solution that uses Web-enabled sensors to provide live information that helps navigate these challenges.
Technology is transforming the way that transportation hubs operate. Historically, cleaning staff tackled tasks such as restocking bath tissue and refilling soap dispensers through room-to-room checks, while administrators often estimated supply orders and coordinated staff schedules based on previous practices. These responsibilities took up valuable time until recently thanks to smart solutions that assist with managing everyday responsibilities and cut down on laborious tasks. Here are four distinctive advantages to incorporating technology into a mass transit facilities’ business model:
- Improving Staffing: By tracking washroom usage through accurate monitoring, facility managers are better informed when making staffing decisions. The technology produces actionable data that transitions cleaning staff from a schedule-based cleaning approach toward a more efficient, needs-based method, so the number of necessary employees per shift can vary dramatically based on facility traffic. By having this data in hand, administrators can better manage staff and anticipate needs.
- Improved Customer Satisfaction: Time-cognizant travelers want to get where they’re headed quickly and the last thing they want is to trek to a restroom only to find that it is out of soap, paper towels or even worse — toilet tissue. The use of intelligent washroom technology can help address common restroom pain points and lower the chance that a customer complains about the status of the restroom in already stressful situations such as travel.
- Efficiency: When bathroom dispensers are equipped with sensors that monitor product levels and share information in real-time, cleaning staff can easily access the Web application-based data via connected devices, such as computers, smart phones or tablets. Having this information at their fingertips enables janitorial teams to update service routes on the go based on facility needs.
- Accurate Ordering: Data captured from smart washrooms helps facility managers better understand product consumption patterns that dictate the volume and frequency of new orders. As navigating the balance between meeting demand and fitting within available storage space is often a concern for high-traffic facilities, real-time data and subsequent analysis can help administrators walk that fine line with finesse.
The benefits of incorporating technology-based solutions in mass transit hubs are endless. By understanding the pain points of keeping washrooms fully stocked in high-traffic areas, real-time data can improve overall efficiency and processes. In addition, transportation industry managers can ensure that commuters’ needs are met without over-extending cleaning staff. Not only can technology improve the efficiency of maintaining transportation hub washrooms, it can also wow first-time visitors and resident commuters alike.
Jimy Baynum is Market Development director of SCA - AfH Professional Hygiene Business.
