What to do as a laundry when the customer asks for insight into garment rotation?
Your customer uses a structured or even registered distribution and collection of corporate clothing, but would like to have insight into the entire process of issuing garments. He/she wants to know what is in circulation of their clothing package, what is at their company or institution, what is at the laundry and possibly what is on its way to and from the laundry.
Garment management can be made transparent in various ways and at different moments in the process and can therefore be controlled. Depending on your or your customer’s requirements, the process can be designed to create “intelligent” workwear!
What is needed for this?
- Garments are provided with a RFID chip for registration (scanning moments in the process).
- The laundry uses a laundry software package (e.g. ABSSolute).
- At desired scanning times, antennas and readers or a hand-held scanner are present for
reading the chips.
Which are the options?
At which points scanning moments will be organised in the process and how extensive the reporting possibilities are, depends on the wishes of the customer, but also on the type of chip that is (already) used within the laundry and/or with the customers. UHF chips have more extensive capabilities, but may also require investment in reading equipment. Different variants are possible in any case to make the process more or less transparent. A KUA offers a very extensive package of possibilities and reports, but is not feasible for every customer. A simplified way of registration with less hardware involved is Chiptex Garment Registration Software.
Software solution – Basis
The LCT-Textilligence Chiptex software is used to keep track of the rotating garments. This database is powered from the laundry database (soiled garment registration). The carrier data will not be used due to privacy legislation. Your institution will gain insight into the age of the garment package, the rotation rates and the number of washings/returns per item. The model below shows the process, with the green star marking the soiled garment registration moment at the laundry. This shows which part of the entire garment pool has been handed in.
Reporting possibilities:
- Number of known garments and the number of rotating garments.
- Consumption per week per location is possible.
- Garments can be scanned with the RFID chip by the laundry in ABSSolute or by the linen clerk in the Chiptex Software environment. This shows what is in circulation and what is in stock.
A hand-held scanner or table reader is optional for this.
As an option for this process, it is also possible to use collection stations to register 100% of the garments handed in. Used garments are checked and safely stored in these stations.
Option 2: extensive
Based on UHF RFID technology
Once clothing is equipped with a UHF chip, a number of automated processes are made easier due to the fact that the clothing can be registered at a greater distance and in bulk.
When the soiled and clean garment registration in the laundry is registered by UHF RFID, the percentage of chips read on entry will increase and the information will be more reliable.
The additional options for reporting and garment management are:
The clean garment registration can be imported. This results in reports with both movements.
When do which garments come in and when do they go back to the laundry?
Active stock management is not possible yet.
Active stock management starts as soon as a hand-held scanner with terminal is used in your facility.
Stock can be counted on a daily basis at the location(s) with a hand-held scanner. The hand-held scanner beams onto the stock and stores the chip numbers of the current stock.
These are then forwarded to the database via a terminal.
The hand-held scanner can also be used to
register soiled garments per container
or to set garments to warehouse status per box.
The current stock can then be compared to a standard stock. Deficits are then shown as null values versus the norm.
As the green stars in the graphic above get closer to the user, the solution becomes more extensive and manageable. The costs (but also the savings) then increase accordingly.
This way, more and more variants can be thought of that may be desirable.
Developments continue and meanwhile, variants of garment management software that is available in the cloud are being developed. On this basis, garment management will be able to partly take place via the web browser.
More information?
If you would like to learn more about these or other solutions, please go to our website or fill out the contact form for more information. Our account manager will get in touch with you as soon as possible.