April 2000

School Supplies
The inside story of how vendor-managed inventory helped change Daycon's relationship with the University of Maryland

— By Matt Schlag-Mendenhall, Editor

But, Teabout, director of building and landscape services for the University of Maryland, and his colleagues could not afford to operate day-to-day by fighting fires. In 1998, they faced a mandate to eliminate $1 million from their housekeeping budget in two years. Along with the university's sanitary supply distributor, Daycon Products Co., Upper Marlboro, Md., the housekeeping executives devised a plan to not only save the money, but address Teabout’s critical big-picture priorities: get more efficient, more accountable and more customer-friendly.

At a recent meeting* at the College Park, Md., campus, Teabout; Sandy Dykes, assistant director for housekeeping services; and three Daycon personnel, Al Garner, sales representative; Keith Gurley, vice president/sales; and Jeff Turner, director of marketing, explained how a new strategy took shape and how its twin components - vendor-managed inventory (VMI) and team cleaning - changed the university's cleaning culture.

Unlikely Allies
After years of attending trade shows and conventions for in-house managers, Teabout and Dykes were frustrated. At industry meetings, they weren't hearing about cost control and other issues they faced at the university.

"We're one of these big schools so we're listening to how people operate, and everyone was talking about how big they are. But I don't think that's what it's all about," recalls Teabout. "We're hearing on our campus, 'Can't you be more efficient? Contractors are saying they can come in and do this.' How were we supposed to compete with contractors making a lot of claims?"

Yet, they turned to these unlikely allies. In 1996, they attended a building service contractor conference in Orlando, Fla., and a few months later they participated in the Building Service Contractors Association International trade show in Nashville, Tenn. Teabout was impressed with the contractors’ focus on customer service. He recalls thinking, “Wow, this is the place we ought to be. Now, I see how they're doing it.

"That's how we got into team cleaning," he says. "Our ears opened up. Our language changed. It's not about your numbers. It's how much can you do with fewer people. This is how contract cleaners do it."

VMI hinges on a distributor taking charge of an end user's inventory process. Team cleaning, which according to one expert is performed in 30 percent of housekeeping operations, uses teams of housekeepers to perform specific tasks - rather than expecting one housekeeper to clean an entire area.

Daycon's Gurley attended the Nashville meeting as well. "We had a brainstorming session over lunch to find out what our real urgencies were individually and collectively," Gurley explains. "From that session, we realized we were all singing from the same hymnbook."

Since the Nashville meeting, Teabout and Dykes say they've thought of themselves as quasi contract cleaners. Their embrace of team-cleaning theory fits the contractor mind-set.

'Give Me the Bullets'
To determine their direction, the group began to survey housekeeping managers about how they felt about their jobs; questions covered morale, management training and labor. To address these issues, Daycon conducted a communications-training course developed by International Distribution Systems, of which Daycon is a member. It helped the managers understand that everyone communicates differently, and to deal with people effectively, managers should play to their style.

"Sandy here loves detailed information," Gurley notes. "Harry says, 'Give me the bullets, I can figure the rest out for myself, but give it to me in a short condensed form.' Once you know that, you understand how to communicate with that person."

From there, the partnership between Daycon and the school took off. A year and a half ago, the transition to VMI and team cleaning began in earnest. To meet its goals, the group — affectionately called “The A Team” — meets monthly to review its progress and decide future direction.

"We have an agenda each month, and we have items that we work on," explains Turner. "At the end of each meeting, we make assignments, and everybody goes off and has to accomplish something by the next meeting.

"Through that process, it really helps, because we get to know each other much better and what each other"s concerns are, and you can start anticipating the other person's needs even before they ask," says Turner.

While the impetus to change procedures began with the bottom line, the school had other concerns, too.

"Part of the reason for increasing standards is that Maryland is pushing really hard to be one of the top 10 universities in the country," Turner notes. "If you're going to be a top university, you've got to have a clean, healthy campus."

A Startling Discovery
As the team got to work, its first tasks were to survey the campus community's perception of the quality of housekeeping, and to determine ways the department wasted money.

One startling discovery was the amount of time housekeepers weren't cleaning.

"Daycon helped us quantify, down to the dollar, the type of money we were spending having our folks pick up supplies for a zone, which might be 10 or 12 buildings, and distribute those supplies once a week," says Dykes. "Between eight zones, we were talking almost half a million dollars in a year's worth of labor and time that our housekeepers were spending being product-delivery people.

"Once we started looking at these numbers, you had no choice but to move in a different direction. It's just too compelling."

While it might have been obvious to Teabout and Dykes that VMI and team cleaning could save the school a lot of time and money, they still had to convince the campus procurement office. Awarding a $600,000 contract to one supplier is more or less unheard of for public institutions. By projecting the amount of labor the department would save - and thus the money it wouldn't spend - Teabout and Dykes were able to secure a temporary contract with Daycon.

After receiving approval on the temporary VMI/team cleaning contract, the team decided it had to communicate effectively with both the housekeeping staff and the tenants of affected buildings. Before changes are made to a building, tenants - deans, faculty, staff — are invited to a meeting to learn about the new system and its benefits.

";We're having a very positive response," says Dykes. "We have people who are not just willing but are very interested in attending. They want to come."

The first building was converted to VMI in February 1999, and today the department has 54 VMI buildings and 15 that are part of team cleaning. It'll be a while before the change hits the whole campus. There are 167 buildings, accounting for more than six million square feet, with a new performing arts center (300,000 square feet) due to open soon.

The Go-Between
To achieve their goals - cost reduction, improved standards, customer satisfaction and cleaning for health — Daycon/Maryland team members knew that housekeepers would have to buy into the plan. Probably the most tangible sign of the leaders' commitment to reinventing the housekeeping department is the role of Al Garner. An 18-year sanitary-supply-industry veteran (three and a half with Daycon), Garner is the soft-spoken yet committed liaison between housekeepers and the leadership.

"I'm actually here on campus the majority of the week surveying, inspecting, communicating with all types of staff," he says. "It could be administrators or vice presidents to whom I'm explaining the story of what we're doing. We need to make sure that everybody understands what we're doing and why on the campus."

More than that, however, Garner is a resource for housekeepers and managers. "He's unintimidating to them, whereas myself or Sandy might be a little intimidating because we've bought into this, we're ready to go," explains Teabout. "They might say, 'Well I really didn't understand this or I really don't know what you meant by that.' But they can come to Al on the side and say, 'Al can you help me with this?' That's another key thing with this partnering. It's change, but we've given our housekeepers help with this change."

Training housekeepers for team cleaning begins with a three-hour workshop. But because each building is unique and other hurdles crop up along the way, Garner's role is constantly in flux.

"The training is crucial to make sure the staff understands the team cleaning aspect in conjunction with vendor-managed inventory," notes Garner. "One complements the other. They have to understand you're not just an area cleaner any more, you're part of an important team. You have to show up on time, you have to have your materials ready, and you start all together at a specific point in time," he says.

"You may be 10 or 15 minutes apart but one may be picking up trash and cleaning off chalk boards, the other one is right behind vacuuming; the other might be mopping the floors, depending on what task is required," Garner adds. "But they also have to understand, that ‘No, you cannot take your cigarette break right now. You have to take it when everybody else is taking it because we're on a schedule.'"

Selling the new system to housekeepers has been difficult at times, Dykes admits. "We just don't change like this overnight. We have a wide range of employees," she notes. "Some are much more accepting; some of our contractual people will do anything because they want a full-time job. They'll be the ones who put the backpacks on and really go for it.

"Some of our long-time employees who liked doing what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it, have been tougher nuts to crack," she adds. "And we don't expect to win over everybody, let alone win over everybody right away."

To explain why they believe the changes are necessary, Dykes and Teabout point to the jobs they've saved. Gurley recalls that during the communication training sessions, Dykes and Teabout told their employees, "[Contractors] will come in and give you a job making half of what you're making. We don't want that to happen. But if you step up to the plate, change your behavior, and do the right thing, we'll have an impact."

Employees are asked to choose which specialty they prefer: vacuuming, restroom cleaning, or trash/dust removal, Dykes says. "We're giving people as many choices and options as we can afford to give them," she notes.

"So they can be brought along as a part of this decision. It may end up that you're not going to be able to work in the building you've always worked in, but at least you have some say in it. And the more options you afford people, the longer it takes to get people sorted out, and the longer it takes to reestablish them and train them. But it's better than encountering a brick wall of resistance if all you're doing is telling people what's going to happen to them."

In the midst of rethinking their department, Teabout and Dykes are attempting to determine appropriate staffing levels. Prior to the VMI contract, the department had been funded for about 300 full-time-equivalent housekeepers, but it currently employs 155 and several part-time contract employees.

"I think it's going to need more, but we're not going to overhire and then let people go," Dykes explains. "So we're in a very painful process right now of establishing the staffing needs per building. No one likes that, but we've had too many situations where we just have to say good-bye to people."

The department laid off a significant number of employees twice in the last eight years, Dykes recalls. So to avoid job cuts, she isn't ready to fill current vacancies. "Having these gaps is hurting us," she admits, "but it's also driving us to set up team cleaning as fast as possible."

How VMI Works
While housekeeping officials determine how many employees they need, their VMI buildings are examples of efficiency most executive housekeepers can only dream of.

The Daycon/Maryland VMI system is fairly simple - at least in concept. The distributor's drivers deliver products directly to each building's janitors' closets. The closets are organized so high-use items are near the door. A Daycon staffer, known as a detailer, checks the inventory in the closets, using a bar-code scanner to record which products need replenishing. Established usage levels - referred to as min/max — also help Daycon plan deliveries.

"Orders are given to our office in sequence based on the way they should be delivered," notes Garner. "Our driver has them all lined up and ready. They are staged and loaded appropriately."

"We leave no empty cardboard boxes behind," adds Gurley. "We take them with us when we go. We straighten up the closet. When they [housekeepers] go in, they should pick up their stuff and go. Their time should be spent cleaning and doing customer retention."

When a building is converted to VMI, all but one of its janitors' closets are closed. By controlling the products coming in to each building, it's less likely that housekeepers will stash products for "safe keeping." Hoarding products was a big problem on campus before VMI.

"One of the scariest things that I have heard come out of a supervisor's mouth in this process was, 'I ran into a closet I didn't even know I had,'" recalls Dykes. "He didn't know it existed, and it was stuffed to the gills with things his people had just thrown in there and forgotten."

New inventory controls under the VMI arrangement have allowed the housekeeping department to "get out of the warehouse business," as Daycon's Gurley puts it. The former warehouse space is being converted into office space.

Successes and Goals
Despite the occasional headaches, the University of Maryland community has reacted positively to the changes. One building's story stands out in Harry Teabout's mind: a 40-year-old classroom and office building.

Because the building generated so many complaints, "We would just throw people at it," Teabout says. "The assistant dean over there deals with facilities all the time. He's very frank and honest. He's one of these people who, if he calls you and tells you something's wrong, he has seen it. Some people call, but they heard it from another person, so they might have the wrong information.

"We took a tour four or five months after we were into team cleaning and VMI in that particular building," he continues. "I walked around with my boss showing off the place because he knows how this place normally would look. We ran into the assistant dean. And he asked him, ‘What do you think of this? How's it going?'

"And the man said, ‘For me it's going perfect. It's going wonderful. I love it.' I never heard this man say this before in my life," he says, recalling the moment as if it took place just hours earlier. "I couldn't believe it. That's what sold it for me. If we can make him happy, we can make the rest of this campus happy."

What's different about housekeeping in a team cleaning situation? In Maryland's case, it means that vacuuming, dusting and trash pickup are daily services. Having restroom specialists means the restrooms are cleaner. Plus, each Friday is "project day." Housekeepers are able to do detail cleaning - from thresholds to escalators - rather than intensive, occasional cleaning.

One of Teabout and Dykes' goals is to offer window washing by using some of the money they've saved. "That's our customer's biggest complaint, that we don't do windows," notes Teabout. "They'd love for us to do windows."

As for Daycon, Gurley says the distributor would like to expand its VMI procedures to other areas, such as hardware and grounds care. Whether or not that happens, it seems clear "The A Team" has impressed people around campus.

"Let's face it," Turner told Teabout and Dykes. "A lot of [other departments] are looking at you. They know that you are the groundbreakers and the leaders; they're waiting to see and make sure that everything's fine, and then they'll gradually come around and join up."

Because the temporary contract expires June 30, Dykes and Paula Mandelman, team leader/buyer in the procurement office, are putting together a request-for-proposal to encourage other distributors to bid on the VMI/team cleaning contract. Dykes says she wants Daycon's competitors to bid for the contract - which covers one year, with options to continue - because the state wants to foster competition; she has heard from some who intend to bid.

Go Team
Even if another distributor wins the bid, it's clear the process of transforming Maryland's housekeeping operations is an accomplishment members of "The A Team" never will forget.

"To everyone on the team, it is personal," stresses Keith Gurley.

Team member respect for one another is easily detectable to an outsider. Gurley refers to Teabout and Dykes as entrepreneurs who are "blazing a new trail."

"They knew they were not going to meet their budget by focusing on price, price, price because that's only 10 percent of the whole," he says.

And Dykes notes that Daycon understands the university's need for a distributor that isn't product-focused.

"Right from the beginning, Daycon has been eager to play a part in increasing our productivity and lowering costs," she says. "That's why this is happening so easily because it's not like we have to beg someone to help us with ideas."

*Editor's note: In addition to the five people SM interviewed, the team includes Mike Sanders, Daycon's director of logistics; Tom Gregory, a Daycon district sales manager; and Mary Walker, Jerome Thomas and Melton Sirleaf, managers in the UMCP housekeeping department.