TAGSYS Partners with Hilden to Launch First RFID-Enabled Linen Services in UK

TAGSYS RFID announced a partnership with Hilden, the UK’s leading supplier of linen products and related services. The partnership will see Hilden become the first company to offer RFID-enabled textile products to its customer base of hotel and hospitality clients in the UK and Ireland. Hilden, part of Vision Support Services, will leverage TASGYS’ 15-plus years of expertise in RFID technology and its proven track record in the textile services market to help its customers better monitor and control linen use.

With RFID-enabled products, Hilden’s customers can take advantage of TAGSYS’ item-level inventory management system based on the industry’s most complete and scalable RFID-based infrastructure. The system, developed specifically for the textile services industry, includes RFID technologies, materials, software and consulting services to satisfy the entire management and logistics process of textile items from, to, and within the laundry and its customers, all from a single source.

TAGSYS’ item-level UHF tracking capabilities ensure higher levels of inventory visibility and address major challenges in the hospitality industry with regard to linen usage, including:

• Substantial loss of inventory through theft, leakage and misplacement.
• Unnecessary hoarding of inventory.
• Inaccurate or incomplete information on available inventory.
• Rising operating costs due to all of the above, plus the manual effort required to track inventory.

As part of the agreement, TAGSYS will provide Hilden with UHF RFID tags in the form of discreet woven labels, which can be seamlessly integrated into textile items. This unique application of RFID technology offers the best read performance, resilience and quality/price ratio on the market compared to other industrial tags. It can sustain pressure of up to 60 bars and a temperature of 200°C (392°F). It is guaranteed for 200 cycles or three years.

“We are delighted to have secured the partnership with TAGSYS; they bring a wealth of experience from their 15 years of implementing RFID tracking systems at multiple sites, combined with their extensive research and development program,” said Rod Nutter, commercial director at Hilden, said. “We are confident together we can continue to innovate into the future.”

“We are extremely pleased to be partnering with Hilden, UK’s leading supplier of linen products and related services,’ Bruno Davoine, vice president sales at TAGSYS, said. “Their deep knowledge in textile rental for the laundry and hotel industry and our comprehensive item-level inventory management system will offer new levels of linen visibility and management efficiency for their customers in the UK and Ireland. Hilden is truly on the leading-edge of technology and, thanks to TAGSYS, they can provide RFID-ready Smart Linen that will bring a wide range of benefits to their customers.”

For both laundries and hoteliers, keeping track of towels and linen moving between laundry and hotel is time consuming and costly. It is estimated that between 15% to 20% of stock is lost through mismanagement, stock hoarding and theft.

In addition to pinpointing where losses and abuse occur, RFID facilitates a better quality of linen to be implemented, ultimately improving overall guest experience. The technology gives full control of the rotation of stock removing all need for manual counting and creates a platform that enables hoteliers to view stock on a real time basis.