Grantex Inc. Improves Customer Service Using Radio Frequency Identification Tag Technology

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While radio frequency identification tags (RFID) have steadily grown in popularity in manufacturing sectors and to track export shipping containers, the tiny chips for years have gone relatively unnoticed. They are now making quite a stir with consumers, especially since major industry drivers such as Wal-Mart are vocalizing an interest in having the tiny chips placed on all products they order.

From a corporate perspective, RFID can provide many potential benefits ranging from effectively tracking consumer preferences to actually achieving real-time inventory levels. These are obviously quite attractive to businesses. But from a consumer perspective, it represents the relinquishment of freedoms that most people are not willing to give up.

Fortunately this type of consumer resistance has not seen any real opposition in the garment industry, despite the fact that a growing number of industrial launderers like Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Grantex Inc. have come to rely on the tiny technology. In fact, most clients love it. All they see is that garments service is continuously improving, says Grantex President Douglas Singer. After seeing the benefits afforded his company by the combined RFID and automated sorting operations, Singer cannot imagine running an industrial garment cleaning facility without the little chip. There is no turning back, says Singer.

Garment-based RFID tags not alarming

According to Grantex Vice President Gordon Reynolds, there is no reason for customers to be concerned about any intrusion because there is a significant difference between the garment and the product chips. The Wal-Mart chip is a 900 MHz chip, which allows long-distance tracking, whereas our chip is 13.5 MHz single read chip provided by Tagsys, and it only allows for recognition within a 10-inch window, he says. That really is all the distance we need. It allows the garments to literally fly by the RFID scanner and we have all the information immediately.

While Singer and Reynolds see no need for the growing firm to ever consider using chips with higher powered processors, they do anticipate that the Grantex will eventually look at implementing a read and write chip as well as a chip that will allow it to read an entire bag of garments at a time. We will keep growing with the technology, says Singer.

So what prompted Grantex to invest in the technology? We wanted to limit our margin of error and better utilize our personnel, says Reynolds. In a typical manual operation, a 2% margin of error is quite common including incomplete deliveries and inconsistent repairs. In the five million tags that have been processed since implementation, we have yet to have a single sorting error.
Grantex provides uniforms for a wide array of service industries including healthcare, food service and manufacturing, and as a result, it must maintain upwards of 700 different uniform style offerings yielding between 60,000 and 150,000 pounds of soiled laundry per week.

That is very important because it speaks to the fact that the typical launder needs be able to handle high inventory levels. It costs $250 to set up one man in uniforms, and you get seven per week in revenues, meaning it takes roughly 31 weeks to hit a breakeven, says Singer. RFID allows us to track, control and maximize the use of our uniforms, which puts us on a new plane for pricing.

How it works

When all of the uniforms come in from a route, they are typically piled next to an operator. The operator then inspects the garment, places it on a hanger and, if a repair is needed, simply presses a button that signifies that the garment needs repair. The system then automatically sends the garment down the repair route rather than the sending the garment upstairs for regular processing.

In the past, this entire sorting process took seven people in a line looking over each garment and handing them to another person for a repair. Supervision did not know who was letting damaged garments slip through, says Singer. Now Grantex employees really do not need a large amount of supervision and language is not an issue whatsoever the technology handles it all.

The machinery currently in place at Grantex can read at 62 pieces per minute, and after a garment is repaired, it is scanned back into the system essentially saying it has been repaired. Once all of the garments are repaired and cleaned, the RFID chip allows the automated system to bundle all the uniforms according to the individual person and the company. This eliminates all of the mistakes. The system now knows the route, delivery day, customer and person all without human intervention, says Reynolds.

This gives us total accountability since the system does an RFID scan immediately after the garment is placed on the hanger. We now know exactly when the garment was selected for repair as well as which operator noticed the damage, says Singer. We are also capable of tracking how frequently a particular person has needed repairs. This is very valuable information because it helps our account managers decide if there is a need to outfit the individual with a more durable garment.

Reynolds adds that this is quite important to garment manufacturers as well since many end users associate the durability of their individual uniform with overall quality of the brand. Having the chip in place helps us to work in concert with the uniform manufacturers and maintain a positive and consistent image, he says. As more garment firms see these benefits, RFID chips will be standard issue not something that we have to request.

Unparalleled accuracy

The result is that our customers get the right uniforms at the right time, so that they can get their job done, explains Singer. We initially had a 100% increase in our repair rate, which should give you an idea of what can slip through on manual systems. Plus our overall processing is 300% times faster.

To date, only a minuscule number of RFID chips have failed and all of the failures have been due to wrong placement within the garment. Although it was relatively short lived, there was a learning curve, said Reynolds. We had to determine the best place to integrate the tags into our garments. Grantex now places the chips in the tail of the shirt near the button plaque. And in pants, Grantex secures the chip near the garment identification tag in the waistband.

Everyone is happy

Customers definitely are not complaining that is the most telling sign, and it has shown through in our customer surveys, says Singer. Prior to implementation, Grantex, like most traditional launderers, was lucky to hit positive responses in the 80s and it is now all of the factors they measure are in the 90s. Because customer retention was so high, we thought that was good, says Singer.

At first, employees did have to adjust to the culture change, but that has not had a lasting impact on the overall atmosphere. In fact, it has allowed Grantex employees to be more creative and help the company explore new avenues. We now have the luxury to look at adding additional items to our product and service line, said Reynolds.

Garment manufacturers are also excited about the entire process. When Grantex orders new garments, most manufacturers are more than willing to sew the RFID chips in eliminating a step for Grantex personnel. According to Singer, most of the manufacturers want to be involved in the process, with Garment Corp. of America being the most responsive. We have been approached by others, said Singer. They all obviously see that this is a direction launderers are taking and will be a driving force in the garment manufacturing industry. There is no question about it this technology is going to change how our entire industry operates.

Other tiny technology

While RFID is sure to make the quickest widespread entry into the garment world, there is another technology that is sure to make a splash in the near future nanofiber-based materials.

According to Jayesh Doshi, Ph.D., a nanofiber expert and president of Chattanooga, Tenn.-based eSpin Technologies Inc., a number of major garment manufacturers including Nike and U.S. military contractors are already looking into incorporating nanofiber based membranes into their product lines.

There are very obvious protection and comfort aspects that nanofiber can offer, says Doshi. One of the most noticeable benefits the technology presents is the ability to prevent microbes and chemical or biological molecules from passing through the membrane.

The only barrier to its immediate acceptance is the fact that much of the technology is still in its infancy, which makes the cost prohibitive for most applications. However Doshi is optimistic that nanofiber technology will make its entrance in the near future. Within the next five years, the technologies will all be proven out and the membranes will be commercially produced, he says. This is definitely the beginning of a very exciting opportunity for the garment industry.

Above story first appeared in MADE TO MEASURE Magazine, Spring & Summer 2004 issue. All rights reserved. Photos appear by special permission.
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