Case Study | Textile management with intelligent laundry depot

Challenge: The intelligent laundry depot

As a leading provider, the Saxon company KEMAS offers process-oriented automation solutions for customers and employees based on RFID technology. These self-service solutions are ideal for textile management. Holistic safety management that takes into account operational processes is a prerequisite for hospitals to fulfill their care mandate and duty of care. This is the only way to ensure the protection and preservation of patients' health and lives. Providing employees with workwear is a personnel and logistical challenge. The aim is to use UHF RFID technology and intelligent room solutions to provide employees with the right amount of workwear around the clock. This allows all employees to use their time for their core business.

Initial situation: Manual handling

Central and staffed laundry outlets are still commonplace. However, these are often not open around the clock. Other systems may be automated, but are far from having the same distribution times. While underwear is often in short supply for employees in general, different staff groups also need to be differentiated by model variants. It is therefore necessary that each item of clothing can be identified automatically. The entire laundry depot must be able to recognize items of clothing and their stock. This turns the textile management system into an intelligent laundry depot. This should be able to analyze bottlenecks, peak times, employee habits, etc. and prevent negative effects.

Solution: IoT solution takes over the entire process from assembly to disposal

With its extensive configurability, a room solution offers many possible solutions. The built-in RFID technology enables reliable identification of all textiles. This IoT solution from Kathrein is simply installed in the respective room solutions. The ARU 3400 RFID reader with integrated 65° wide-range antenna from Kathrein is used. These readers are supplemented by the wide-range 70° antenna to ensure a high detection rate even when loading into laundry containers. A prerequisite for the textile management solution is that each individual textile is marked with a UHF RFID label. This is identified at the supply points during loading, removal, return and disposal. Thanks to simple configurations of the systems, the room system remains very flexible in terms of the removal conditions for employees. The IoT solution described can be expanded in various technical and organizational directions. Authorizations, notifications, reading points, data evaluations and other functions can be easily implemented in the system.

Result: Intelligent laundry management system

Thanks to RFID technology, the laundry management system makes a significant contribution to simplifying and streamlining daily work. The availability of fresh textiles is ensured around the clock. Reliable and transparent data collection is guaranteed and enables optimal control of textile use. At the same time, access can be controlled via an authorization management system and the central laundry warehouse becomes an intelligent clothing depot. A real-time inventory of the textile stock is possible at any time. Detailed information on textile service life and simplified expenditure are further advantages of real-time transparency.

 

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Case Study | Textile management with intelligent laundry depot