Page 117 - Business Plans that Work A Guide for Small Business

108 • Business Plans that Work

• Pickup and Delivery: Our drivers use simple handheld bar-
code readers to track their pickups, loads, and deliveries.
A Global Positioning System (GPS) is onboard our vehi-
cles to track driver location in real time and reconstruct
The plan does a nice routes in the event of mistakes.
job of detailing the scope
of the operational process. • Weighing In: Laundry bags are weighed in to the hun-
Dan could have added a dredth of a pound. Weigh person as well as date and time
timeline to show how long
this process takes. are collected. Untagged bags are bar-coded.
• Washing: Data is collected as laundry is put into the
wash, including wash person, date and time, any special
requests, dry clean items, and which machines laundry is
washed and dried in.
• Folding: We track which folders folded which customer’s laundry when, and the
pounds folded per hour for each employee, so that quality and error rates can
be tracked to individual employees. Folder names are displayed on completed
package labels.
• Packaging: Finished laundry is precisely weighed and discrepancies are checked.
Folding and washing quality and accuracy of special request completions are
checked off. Wrap person, date, and times are logged.
• Video Surveillance: Each workstation on the laundry floor
is video recorded for quality assurance. Live video and
playback are accessible over the Internet.
Since storage is
a central part of the
Lazybones business, the Storage
operations around it are
also detailed.
• Pickup and Delivery: Two man teams pick up storage
directly from student dorm rooms and apartments. Hand-
held scanners collect item codes and counts as well as
pickup times. Customers are given handwritten carbon
lists of items picked up. On delivery, package codes are
scanned and the manifest is signed.
I
• nvoicing: Trucks are unloaded in our warehouse; items
are separated by customer and logged in by type and size.
The detail in this
section helps the reader Items are inventoried, palletized, wrapped, and stored.
understand this is a sophis-
ticated business. Item descriptions, charges, insured values, and resting
locations are posted to customer accounts, and fully
itemized receipts are issued.