The consumable lines, their packs, and how a pack is counted

Four groups, and why the sheet is kept in groups

Lines are grouped by where in a building they are used rather than by what they are made of. A round is walked in one order — washroom, floors, surfaces, waste — and a sheet grouped the same way is picked in one pass instead of four.

Grouping also keeps the count honest. A towel sleeve and a cloth pack are both paper-shaped bundles on a trolley, and counting them against one another is the easiest mistake to make at a door. Held in separate groups, they are counted against separate lines.

Washroom

Folded hand towel in interleaved sleeves, liquid hand soap in refill cartridges, toilet tissue in wrapped rolls. Held against the dispensers fitted in the building, because the dispenser decides the size.

Floors

Neutral floor detergent as a concentrate in drums, flat microfibre mop heads in inners of ten, and dust-control sheets. Held against the frames and machines issued to the site.

Surfaces

Colour-coded folded cloths in packs, general-purpose cleaner in trigger bottles and refill drums, and glass cleaner. Colour coding is part of the line, not an option on it.

Waste

Flat waste sacks in two gauges on rolls, in cases. Sacks are held against the bins in the building by flat size, and the gauge is marked on the line because a sack of the right size in the wrong gauge tears.

How a pack is counted

Every consumable line names three nested things: the outer that is delivered, the inner it breaks into, and the unit that is used. The sheet asks for the units in a pack and the packs held as two separate figures because the two are counted by different people in different places — the packs at the door, the units on the shelf.

1. Count the outers. The outer is the thing on the pallet and the thing on the consignment. It is counted whole, and a broken outer is counted as what is actually inside it, not as one.
2. Read the inner count off the outer. The inner count is printed on the pack. It is read rather than remembered, because the same line can change its inner count between runs.
3. Multiply once, and write it down. Units in a pack times packs held is the quantity the shelf actually holds, and it is the only figure the run-rate arithmetic can work from.
4. Mark a broken inner. Where a round needs part of an inner, the remainder goes back to the shelf marked with what is left in it, so the next count does not treat it as full.

Cycles, and lines that are held on call

Most lines sit on a fixed cycle: weekly, fortnightly or four-weekly. The cycle is chosen so the shelf is brought back up before it empties, and the week it would have emptied is worked out from the units held and the weekly use rather than guessed from how the shelf looks.

Some lines cannot be held that way. A washroom consumable in a building with a changing headcount is used unevenly enough that a fixed cycle either leaves the shelf short or leaves cases standing for a month. Those lines are held on call: counted on each visit, and the count taken at the door is what the next consignment is built from.

A line can move between the two. A building that settles into a steady pattern moves from on call onto a cycle, and one that changes use moves back. The line itself does not change wording when it moves, which is the point of writing the line and the cycle in separate columns.