When Scott Meyer, the owner of Village Uniform and Linen, joined his father’s family business in 1996, to help grow the firm’s industrial laundry division, he began experimenting with a radio frequency identification solution to manage the sorting of piles and bags full of uniforms, mats and linens. The resulting solution, which he developed with assistance from RFID company Datamars—a Swiss RFID firm with a U.S. office in Woburn, Mass.—has helped Village Uniform grow its industrial business. Meyer is now marketing the system, known as Simple Sort, to other laundry and cleaning companies worldwide.
Meyer’s spin-off firm, known as RFID Laundry Consultant Inc., is providing the Simple Sort system, which consists of Datamars’ RFID readers, tunnel antennas, and high-frequency (HF) LaundryChip RFID tags complying with the ISO 15693 standard, as well as RFID Laundry Consultant’s software.
One overriding problem facing industrial laundry companies such as Village Uniform is how to efficiently manage the volume of items traveling from and to customers. Most such businesses not only provide cleaning services, but also products—such as floor mats, linens or uniforms. On a regular basis, a delivery worker picks up the soiled items, transports them to a location for laundering and sorting, and then returns them, cleaned and ready for use.
Tracking floor mats can be difficult since they are heavy to lift, and additional lifting is exactly what is required for visual inspection to identify a printed bar-coded or text label, in order to determine whether the item has been laundered, and where it should be routed after being cleaned. Uniforms pose their own challenges, as they are typically issued to a specific employee, and thus the pants, shirt and any other clothing items must be packaged together after cleaning. In addition, all items must be sorted according to the customer, and must be placed on the appropriate truck for delivery—all of which can be time-consuming and provide a potential for error.
Traditionally, tracking by industrial cleaners is performed via labels printed with serial numbers in the form of bar codes or text. But recently, says Daryl Kuna, the VP of sales for Datamars’ U.S. office, RFID technology has been providing a solution, by enabling laundries to more easily identify each item being processed.Meyer began working with Datamars in 1997, and developed his own software to be used with the Datamars readers. Throughout the past decade and a half, he has sampled HF and ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) tags, as well as a variety of locations for tunnel or other fixed RFID readers. He has installed the interrogators at the facility’s entrance, for use when soiled items are first received, and at various locations during the cleaning, sorting and shipping processes. His software enables Village Uniform and Linen to track when and how often each item is laundered, and also ensures that the proper garments are loaded onto the correct trucks once cleaning is completed.
Meyer describes his facility as a laboratory, constantly testing new solutions with RFID to further improve his operations’ efficiency. Currently, he says, with interrogators capturing reads of tagged mats, uniforms and other products as they enter the facility and then pass through the sortation process, he can process 546 items per hour.
Two years ago, Meyer was contacted by a friend, Bruce Kloter, the president of Swiss Cleaners, a Connecticut laundry service provider with a division that supplies uniforms on a rental basis, along with cleaning and repair services. At the time, Meyer recalls, Kloter indicated that Swiss Cleaners was considering using another RFID company’s solution that promised it could track 250 tagged items per hour moving through the washing process. Based on Meyer’s higher throughput number (more than double the other company’s offer, in fact), Kloter opted instead to install the Simple Sort solution. Swiss Cleaners’ installation, Meyer says, is typical of what Simple Sort customers tend to deploy. The solution includes tags, four RFID readers, a new conveyor system to move the washed uniforms, and software to manage read data.
Swiss Cleaners has applied 13.56 MHz Tara LaundryChip RFID tags, measuring 15 millimeters (0.6 inch) in diameter, to its garments and linens, which the company then issues to its customers. Each tag’s unique ID number is linked to the customer data in the Simple Sort software. Swiss Cleaners has a Datamars A-ST 1330 TT Tabletop RFID reader antenna installed at the steam tunnel that follows the washing process. At this point, tagged garments, such as work uniforms, pass down a conveyor, and their tags are interrogated. The unique ID is received via the reader’s cabled connection, by the software residing on Swiss Cleaners’ back-end system. There, the date and time stamp are linked to that item, indicating the time and day on which it was washed. This data enables Swiss Cleaners to know how often its garments were cleaned, for maintenance record purposes, as well as to properly bill the customer according to the particular services provided.At the sortation area, another A-ST 1330 reader is installed where garments are sorted according to the customer and the individuals who wear the garments, thereby enabling the uniforms to be appropriately packed together and loaded onto the truck to match the driver’s route. As the tag is read, Simple Sort software sends the read data to Swiss Cleaner’s software, which then informs workers regarding on which of three conveyors the items should be hung, and in which slot; this enables the staff to match individual parts of a uniform together for a specific employee. Workers undertaking the sorting process read the instructions displayed on a screen at this location.
A third reader is used for any repairs that may be deemed necessary. If an item has been flagged as requiring mending, it then passes to another area for appropriate service, and the tag is again interrogated to indicate which uniform has been repaired.
Finally, a fourth reader verifies which items are being loaded onto trucks. A screen mounted in the loading area, linked to the system, indicates whether each load is correct. If necessary, Kloter says, the staff can then correct the order, if necessary, before it is placed onto a truck. Since Swiss Cleaners began using the system in December 2011, he reports that customer complaints related to misrouted uniforms are down, due to each shipment’s accuracy. “We’ve seen 100 percent improvement in accuracy,” he states, noting that although he expects the system to make the routing of products faster, customer satisfaction is the priority.
Although Swiss Cleaners attached HF tags to its products initially, Meyer says the solution would also work with UHF tags, if another customer were to request it.