By Paul Condie
WAXIE Sanitary Supply is pleased to announce it has made a substantial contribution to developing ANSI standards in the jan/san industry. The contribution was presented to the Simon Institute (SI). SI is the accredited developer of standards for the custodial, janitorial and housekeeping industry. The contribution was presented by Charles Wax and Rick Hazard on behalf of WAXIE to the Simon Institute leadership Paul Condie, President; Renae Walker,Treasurer and Jim Ginnaty, Chairman of the Standards Writing Committee. At the presentation Rick Hazard commented that “WAXIE has long promoted improved cleaning standards and professionalism in the cleaning industry. We see this contribution as another step in our continuing efforts in improving the jan/san industry, and doing so through the development of standards will have a lasting effect.”
WAXIE Sanitary Supply is America’s largest family-owned distributor of sanitary maintenance supplies. They are an industry leader in the distribution of quality cleaning chemicals, equipment, disposables, and accessories to the building service contractor, school, hospitality, healthcare, military, government, industrial, and retail markets. Headquartered in San Diego, California the company consists of over 800 dedicated professionals working out of Inventory Centers servicing the western United States including California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Alaska.
The Simon Institute was founded in 2001 by the Boeing Company to benchmark best practices in facility cleaning. The Boeing Company sponsored a symposium at their global headquarters in Puget Sound including events in the largest building in the world (according to the Guinness Book of world records) Boeing utilized the symposium to fulfill requirements of Malcolm Baldridge Quality award. At that first symposium Boeing documented that their cleaning process was ISO 9001 compliant and satisfied requirements for quality control in the aerospace manufacturing segment. Following the Boeing sponsored symposium other participants voted to continue the benchmarking best practices project. The following year it was sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst sponsored the following year’s program in 2003 and in 2004 GMI, a San Diego based BSC, sponsored symposium. In 2006 the symposium’s name was changed and it became the Simon Institute, a not for profit organization, dedicated to improving facility cleaning operation standards. In 2014 the Simon Institute was accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as the standards developer (ASD) for the custodial, janitorial and housekeeping industry. The Waxie donation is to support the first SI standards project BSR SI-0001 Standard to improve the safety of chemical cleaning handlers in facilities.