Unloading, and what it keeps
The wash is done and the drum needs emptying. Pressing Unload on a busy card takes the order off that machine and closes the record of the time it spent there.
The run is kept: which order, who loaded it, how long it took.
Unloading frees the machine and moves the order on.
What unloading does
Four things happen at once. The machine goes idle and can take the next order. Its lifetime cycle count rises by one — the number along the bottom of the card. The run closes with the time it ended, the name of the staff member who ended it, and the reason. And the order's history gains a line reading “Unloaded from the machine”.
What does not happen is a status change. An order unloaded from Washer 3 is still in Washing, so it rejoins the wash queue and waits for a drum. Moving it on is a separate decision, made on the order.
The other ways a run ends
Unloading is the deliberate one, but a run also closes when the order moves.
| What you did | The machine | The cycle |
|---|---|---|
| Pressed unload | Freed | Counted |
| Moved the order to a status that takes no machine — Quality check, say | Freed | Counted |
| Moved a washing order into Drying, on a dryer | Washer freed, dryer loaded | The washer's cycle is counted |
| Moved the order to a different washer | The first one freed | Not counted |
That last row is the exception worth knowing. Swapping a load from one washer to another is a reassignment — the first machine broke, or you needed the bigger drum — and no wash finished in it, so it does not earn a cycle. Moving from a washer to a dryer is different: the wash genuinely ended, and the counting says so.
What the record is worth
Every closed run is a row you can be asked about six weeks later, and it is enough to answer with. It names the machine, the order, the staff member who loaded it, the one who ended it, and the two timestamps that give you the duration.
Those rows are what the machine efficiency report is built from — cycles run, average cycle length and active hours, per machine, over the window you choose. Reassignments are left out of the cycle count there for the same reason they are left out of the lifetime total. The staff performance report counts machine loads by person from the same records, which is the honest measure of who was on the floor. Runs belonging to an order you later removed from the books are excluded from both.