CHICAGO — Elgar Straub is managing director of VDMA (German Engineering Federation) Bavaria: Textile Care, Fabric and Leather Technologies in Munich.
He has seen many technological advances in industrial laundry operations, and one that has been readily accepted and used in the European textile care industry is radio-frequency identification — RFID — technology.
Straub says that the numbers for one expert RFID company provide an example of how accepted the technology has become in European laundry operations.
“Datamars is a Swiss company, and they were one of the pioneers to use RFID for the textile industry, making it for the textile care industry,” he says. “Their other big market is cattle, believe it or not, mainly in Australia, in an area where cattle are running alone for miles.
“They have over 10,000 installations today for their RFID chips in the textile care industry. Over 10,000 installations means 10,000 customers.”
While European laundry operations have embraced the technology for many reasons, from controlling goods to reducing labor costs, RFID hasn’t been used as readily in the United States.
Why is this, and what can U.S. laundry operators learn from their European counterparts?
RFID IN EUROPE
Straub says that discussions about using RFID in Europe, across all industries, started in the 1990s.
“In the 2000s, they used it more and more in the textile care industry, mainly for hotels and hospitals, because it’s much easier to sort the textiles before the washing process and then after the washing process,” he says.
“It was accepted relatively quickly, mainly in the textile care industry — not, for example, in the normal garment business because people were anxious that they could be tracked and so on. But for the industrial textile care business, it is really used today more or less everywhere because you can follow the track of the textiles to which hotel or to which hospital they belong, and what was the form of use for it, and so on.
“I think it’s mainly to ease the logistics chain and the sorting procedure in the laundry facilities.”
Straub admits there were questions in Europe, at first, about the price of initiating RFID and the durability of the new technology.
“The chips must be usable not only for months or something like that but really for the whole lifelong period of the garments or other laundry items,” he explains.
Industrial laundries use large industrial equipment on goods, Straub points out. The RFID chips have to be able to withstand the mechanical actions, forces, and temperatures throughout the process.
“This was solved very quickly,” he says. “This is technologically possible right now, and as soon as people realized that it was much easier to handle the processes, they accepted it, and it was used.
“It was relatively quick, and today it’s used everywhere. You know exactly when you deliver your laundry to 10 hotels in a city, you always know how many you get and then where to send it back. It’s really easy.”
And the cost? Straub shares that the price for RFID is not that high anymore.
“It’s cents (per item). It’s not even a dollar,” he points out. “It always goes with the number of items used, and if you use thousands and thousands of them, it’s getting cheaper and cheaper. So today, it’s not really a matter of cost anymore. And compared with the cost, for example, for sorting, it’s less.”
Doug Story is president and senior consultant of MorgenBrooke LLC, a specialty chemical cleaning consultancy in Sylva, North Carolina. He holds patents based on RFID technology and has looked into its usage in operations around the world.
Initially, he thought the reasons behind greater European acceptance of RFID and the slow U.S. adoption would be a simple answer around the industry on both continents, but his research proved otherwise.
“Throughout my career in global markets, I believed the U.S. had the most diverse and competitive commercial laundry businesses, while Europe and other regions were more monopolistic,” shares Story.
“However, I learned that in general, it appears competition is more intense in Europe. You learn something new every day.”
European and Asia-Pacific laundry operators provided several reasons to him for readily adopting RFID technology, including:
- Ability to track linens, integrating this data into inventory management.
- Data-driven systems reducing cost through better par and replacement management.
- Efficient use of linens, reducing waste and enhancing sustainability.
- Detailed control of goods, less labor handling and complete tracking from washer to customer.
- Reduced loss and improved visibility of rental life cycles.
Check back next Thursday (June 19) for the conclusion about benefits European laundries see from RFID and the use of the technology in the United States.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
