How to Enhance Traceability in your Commercial Laundry

03.19.19

Inventory management and garment tracking can be difficult to maintain when processing speeds and throughput requirements increase. Items can quickly get lost, resulting in rework, inefficient processes and – in the worst cases – inaccurate accounting and inventory practices.

Some laundries are turning to radio frequency identification (RFID) transponders and tags to track garments and linens through their supply chain from soil to pack out. These RFID tags use antennas or microchips to receive and transmit data.

While they’re an excellent solution for individual products and offer full tracking capabilities, RFID tags are expensive. Not only that, when it comes to stacked product, they can provide an inefficient process by requiring a tag on each individual item. With ultrasonic banding, stacks can be bundled and tracked in one step.

HOW WILL ULTRASONIC BANDING IMPROVE MY TRACKING CAPABILITIES?

Ultrasonic banding is an efficient way of bundling, labeling or unitizing a single product or group of products without external heat or adhesives. More specifically, it uses an ultrasonic weld to secure banding material to itself. The result is a high-quality label with vibrant graphics that doesn’t require any adhesives to be applied to your product.

Placed just after a folder or stacker, ultrasonic banding systems can be fitted with inline printers that are able to accommodate nearly any type of variable data – dates, names, numbers, barcodes, QR codes – depending on your tracking needs. These printers can communicate with your tracking system components and print the corresponding data on each band as it’s applied to the product.

Combined with Felins’ traffic control master (TCM), bundles can merge from several incline conveyors onto the main conveyor without risk of crashes and provide full bundle control from stackers to pack out.

The end result? Clean, professional-looking bundles that can be tracked easily without breaking the bank.