RFID solution for Laundry Management
RFID solution for Laundry Management
RFID solution for Laundry Management
AirJuice, with its head office in Mississauga, Ontario and offices in Montreal, Calgary and Florida is a leading RFID systems integrator and provider of premium HF and UHF Readers and Antennas. AirJuice has successfully installed several Laundry Management solutions at leading hotels and casinos in North America such as Harrah's Casino, Universal Studio, Ritz-Carleton and their latest installation at Fairmont Pacific Hotel in Vancouver.
Laundry Management Solution allows hospitals, hotels and casino operators to more accurately manage its inventory of several thousands (even hundreds of thousands) of employee uniforms, bathrobes, towels, tablecloths, bed sheets and other linens. Advanced RFID tags embedded in all clothing & linen items allows the hospitality operators to quickly and accurately monitor its inventory of outgoing and incoming laundry while significantly reducing the costs of replacing missing items and the operational costs associated with a manual tracking process. Advanced software used as a part of the Laundry Management Solution can be integrated with the purchasing and human resources software to allow tracking of inventory from the time an order is placed and items received and when the uniforms are issued to employees.
Laundry Management Solution begins with RFID tags (contained within a small fabric patch) that are sewn in to the clothing items. Each RFID tag is encoded with a unique ID number and information such as the type of item (bathrobe, bed sheet, tablecloth, etc ;) and at the beginning of the process each clothing item is read into the database. Once in use the laundry items( such as employee uniforms) are usually dropped in a laundry chute whereby they are read automatically when dropped in the chute. Other laundry items such as towels and bed sheets are collected from the rooms and dumped in laundry bins. When these items need to leave the property for laundering, they are piled in a cart that is wheeled through a doorway. The doorway is equipped with antennas and readers which will capture the ID number of every item that passes through the doorway. This information is then sent either through a wired connection or wirelessly to the computer, where the data is stored indicating the items that have gone out to be laundered. When freshly laundered items are returned in hampers, or hanging on Z-racks, they again pass through a gateway where the antennas and readers will simultaneously read the RFID tags of all items being returned. The software compares the Tag ID of items being returned with the items that were sent out. The staff can then run business reports showing, for example, how often items have been laundered, the amount of time they were gone and which items did not return. The software can even determine the number of wash cycles an item has gone through and raise an alarm when the item has reached its end of life so that it can be removed from use.
Explaining the overall solution, Robert Lynn of AirJuice noted how cutting edge technologies from various partners were integrated to develop an innovative solution that addressed real world need.
Tags: Fujitsu designed UHF tags that are extremely durable with read range from 12 inches to 6 feet and able to withstand harsh chemicals and high temperature ( up to 85 C in washers, 120 C in dryers and 200 C in ironing) during hundreds of washing, dry-cleaning and ironing cycles. The small bendable tags that can be read when wet, were made to resemble a fabric patch that can be sewn inside clothing and perform at 99.9% accuracy.
Readers and Antennas: Impinj provided RFID readers and antenna arrays which were able to read without line of sight and with tags in any orientation with ability to read 500 tags simultaneously.
Portals: AirJuice acting as a hardware systems integrator designed, developed and commissioned 8' x 8' portals to accommodate large laundry hampers, Z-rack and pallets containing dirty laundry items. The antenna arrays were precisely located and calibrated to ensure complete read out of all RFID tags.
Software: The Linen Manager software from Foundation Logic provided an inventory management system for automated tracking of thousands of laundry items that were delivered to the laundry room or commercial dry cleaners and again when the same items were returned. The various modules in the software generates reports, such as:
Linen Report: Summary report showing inventory of all new items coming into the property.
Cleaner Dispatch Report: List of all items being sent to the outside laundry facility. The driver can be asked to sign the report for quantity of items received.
Outstanding Items Report: Immediately verifies which items were not returned.
Cleaner Billing Report: Completely accurate records of billings
Stocking Linen Closets: With antennas placed at linen closets on each floor these reports identify the quantity of items stocked at each closet and the amount of individual items for runners to fill in each closet
Assigned Garment Report: Automated or manual scanners placed under the counter can identify when uniform items are assigned to employees. These reports can identify various garments issued to employees, and employees are held accountable for what they have.
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