Like many other sectors, the textile service industry is facing a labour shortage. To cope with the shortage, companies will continue to invest in digitising and automating their processes. In the future, robots will take over more and more similar tasks such as sorting dirty laundry or folding terry towelling. Fewer people will also be needed for other manual tasks, as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems will take over the recording, control and tracking of laundry. This will free up the existing laundry team for other important tasks.
A working RFID concept requires hardware and software on the one hand and laundry equipped with a receiver-responder on the other. One of our latest services is to equip our textiles with Datamars transponders. The textile strips, which contain a microchip and an antenna, are incorporated by us directly into the hem of a piece of linen, where they are largely invisible to the hotel and the guest. This saves labour and time, as we take care of ordering and providing the tags directly. This results in a significant cost advantage, as the bundled chip shipment reduces costs and customs-related delivery delays when importing to the countries of production. To relieve a textile service company even more of the preparatory work, we also read the chip numbers on new goods, compile the data into a CSV file and provide it with the delivery note. This eliminates need for the textile service to scan new goods.
On request, it is also possible to install transponders from other manufacturers if the customer prefers to provide these themselves.
And we are thinking one step further: we are currently exploring the possibility of delivering linen orders with pre-configured Datamars transponders. Bed, table and bad linen would then be ‘ready to use’ immediately!
*Source: Textile Exchange 2014