Background
Elis is one of the world's largest providers of textile rental and hygiene services solutions, listed on Euronext. Present in 28 countries across Europe and Latin America, it employs 45,000 professionals currently at 440 production and service centers, with more than 400,000 clients worldwide. Elis laundry center is faced with the handling of thousands of customers' workwears, towels, tablecloths and bed sheets every day. As a result, it is a huge challenge for inventory management and laundry process tracking.
Elis is one of the world's largest providers of textile rental and hygiene services solutions, listed on Euronext. Present in 28 countries across Europe and Latin America, it employs 45,000 professionals currently at 440 production and service centers, with more than 400,000 clients worldwide. Elis laundry center is faced with the handling of thousands of customers' workwears, towels, tablecloths and bed sheets every day. As a result, it is a huge challenge for inventory management and laundry process tracking.
Challenges
- There are a large number of linens of different types from hotels, hospitals, bathing places and linen rental companies. Traditional sorting method not only consumes a lot of manpower and time but also brings a range of potential losses and risks. Due to the diversity of the business, there are many missing items during the laundry process each year, causing considerable losses to the company. For particular clients like the hospitals, due to the awareness of cross-infection, the number of linens to be washed cannot be easily counted, resulting in commercial disputes with clients when handing over.
- In addition, it is difficult to effectively track the washing process, washing times, stock status and classification of each piece of linens, which is not only prone to leaving some linens out, but also unable to ensure the minimum safety stock for each type of linen in time. As a result, it affects the normal operation and management of the company.
Solution
In order to solve the problems, Chainway empowers Elis with its UHF RFID reader for intelligent laundry management of linens. Firstly, a RFID tag is sewed on each piece of linen. The laundry staff with Chainway C72 scans UHF tags on linens to capture data of flows like receiving, transfer, sorting, put-away, inventory counting of linens. Meanwhile, the detailed data of each process is collected automatically and uploaded to the back-end system via wifi in real time. It helps laundry managers grasp the real-time status of each link of the cloth circulation, including washing times, washing costs, the quantity of linen rental and expenses of each client. The deployment of Chainway C72 with its self-developed RFID module enables the visibility of laundry management to provide real-time data support for scientific management of enterprises.
Effects
- With the application of Chainway RFID readers, it automatically identifies linens and supports data collection in bulk, taking place of manual identification, which greatly enhances the efficiency and accuracy of sorting. The working task that used to be completed with hours by several workers together, can be finalized by one person with a few minutes now, which significantly improves the working efficiency and cuts down labor costs of linen sorting.
- Using C72, the laundry worker accurately counts cleaning times of the linens, and the data is uploaded to the system for further analysis, which can effectively predict the service life of each piece of linen. Then the laundry worker can plan ahead to make timely replacement of linens, with the purpose of ensuring a necessary stock level, which reduces the replenishment time caused by the loss or damage of linens.
- During the process of in-put and out-put of the warehouse, Chainway C72 UHF RFID reader can be deployed to collect real-time data of linens At the same time, the inventory data is uploaded to the back-end system that enables a full view of dynamic inventory data at a glance. It simply helps Elis to achieve the visibility of inventory management with high efficiency.
- Moreover, the perfect combination of Chainway C72 and its application system can effectively track the information of each piece of cloth and the corresponding person in charge. When the cloth is misplaced or lost, managers can trace the time and position of the last disappearance with RFID, so as to discover and handle it properly in time. It effectively reduces the risks of losses and theft, avoiding unnecessary economic losses.
PDA Configuration
P/N: C72
Functions: 2D, UHF RFID
