From the Sector

Based in Porto, Portugal, Rodrigo Siza will focus on nurturing new regional collaborations to benefit the needs of Lectra’s customers, and faciliate their success in the Industry 4.0 era. Rodrigo will rely on Lectra’s highly experienced teams located in the region.
“Rodrigo has very effectively established long-term partnerships with our fashion and apparel, automotive and furniture customers in Portugal. He has helped our customers to emerge stronger from the world crisis which heavily impacted them. After 10 successful years as head of Lectra Portgual, Rodrigo is now also in charge of meeting the expectations of our Spanish customers,” stated Daniel Harari, Lectra Chairman and CEO.

Players in the region are witnessing a strong dynamic, notably fashion brands in Spain and fashion and automotive industrialists with heightened added-value in Portugal. With the recent announcement of a new strategy to focus on Industry 4.0, Lectra is in a strong position to support these businesses in the digitalization of their processes.
For industries faced with more demanding consumers and ever-shorter product development and manufacturing cycles, integrating all steps along the extended supply chain, from design to cutting, is now a top priority. This is particularly apparent in Spain and Portugal, two countries positioned, in their own way, at the heart of Europe’s fashion and automotive industries.
Rodrigo started his career at Tradetex, a trading company of textiles for clothing, as a textile designer. From 1991 to 1999, he was an associate of V-Sistemas Informatica, specialized in the development and distribution of technical solutions for the textile industry. In 2000, he joined Lectra Portugal as a design and merchandising manager, and then evolved into the position of international consultant in 2004. He left Lectra in 2005 to take the position of Sales Director of RPB Têxteis e Vestuario, a company that makes clothes, before returning to Lectra in 2007 to take over the management of the Portuguese subsidiary. Rodrigo has a masters in marketing from Minho University and a degree in design and communication from Porto University, both located in Portugal.

TRSA has upgraded its inspection management protocol for Clean Green and Hygienically Clean certifications, appointing an inspection program administrator and auditor to train and administer the inspection process and inspector training.
This enhances TRSA’s well-established reputation for expertise, consistency and impartiality for all applicant laundry companies and plants when inspectors verify their adherence to best management practices (BMPs). It also adds a highly expert third party to oversee the inspection program. It aligns with ISO quality management system (QMS) standards for assessing laundry applicants’ quality assurance practices and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) plans.

Laundry Design Group, LLC, Las Vegas, Nevada was selected as inspection program administrator after considering several firms, acknowledged for excellence in evaluating businesses’ QA guideline compliance. Bob Corfield, the firm’s CEO, has over 30 years’ industry experience, five performing inspections for Clean Green and Hygienically Clean. Corfield is a certified ISO QMS Lead Auditor with a HACCP designation.
As chief inspector and program administrator, Corfield identifies, administers and trains the independent inspector team. Each inspector enters a comprehensive training program including certification standards review, evidence collection procedures, interview protocol, ATP (work surface) testing, technology use, HACCP compliance and sample collection procedures. Training also focuses on educating inspectors regarding acceptable approaches launderers can take to implement BMPs. Each inspector must agree to a code of ethics including confidentiality and conflict of interest statements.
The inspection program is deployed on an iPad application that all inspectors must use for note-taking, evidence collection, and inspection scoring. This creates consistency from inspection to inspection and inspector to inspector. Inspectors’ reports are disseminated within hours of each inspection for lead audit review and discussion if required.

An exhibit at the recent Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA) annual meeting in Washington promoted the value of doing business with a Hygienically Clean Healthcare certified launderer. More than 120 attendees learned how the certification verifies laundries’ best management practices (BMPs) and quantifies laundered product cleanliness. The display marked the first such promotion of Hygienically Clean Healthcare to an outpatient medical market. Previous exhibits touted the certification to hospital audiences: the Association for the Healthcare Environment (AHE) and Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). Like members of those groups, most ASCA participants interviewed were industry customers, but represented a wider variety of professions, including M.D. owners and these job titles:

• Administrator • Business Manager
• CEO, President, CFO, COO
• Chief Medical Officer
• Clinical Coordinator, Director
• Nursing Director
• Regional Director, VP

Roughly 10 percent of the visitors to the Hygienically Clean exhibit on May 3-5 expressed concern about the product and service quality of their linen, uniform and facility services providers. Using a Hygienically Clean certified launderer addresses quality concerns, they were told, as inspectors focus on a facility’s quality assurance manual as the hub of control measures (BMPs) that minimize potential for error. In addition, unlike Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC) certification, Hygienically Clean microbial testing measures finished product quality, enforcing a total microbial content ceiling, including yeasts, molds and bacteria.

“Lenzing stands for a responsible approach to nature. For this reason, we use 100% of the natural resource wood, from the core to the bark – as pulp, bioenergy and biochemicals such as acetic acid”, explains Lenzing CEO Stefan Doboczky. “That is why we are very pleased that our pioneering role with respect to the issue of sustainability has gained worldwide recognition”, Mr. Doboczky adds.

The Lenzing Group produces dissolving pulp at its sites in Lenzing, Austria and Paskov, Czech Republic. All the valuable raw materials are extracted from the wood within the framework of a cascading use. Acetic acid is derived from beech wood in the pulp production process, is recovered in several process steps and processed into high quality, food-grade acetic acid, for example for the food industry. Furfural is a product utilized as a solvent in the refining of lubrication oil, to name one example. Magnesium lignosulfonate is found in animal food or fertilizers.