How to digitalize textiles?
Can you imagine how to digitalize textiles – workwear and bed linens for example? Today, digitalization happens everywhere, and with this blog about technology behind our services, we wanted to introduce you to the exciting world of textiles.
Digitalized textiles mean a journey towards better customer experience for us; better textile flow, guaranteed textile availability and flexibility for the users. So, let’s take a closer look at the used technology.
Textiles can speak through radio waves
The technology behind all is called RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). RFID appears in our textiles as small tags. The tag is read by a reader, which enables us to follow different kinds of actions, like usage and frequency of washing. In the future we ca follow the lifecycle of textiles even in more detail. On the other hand, our customers can improve their processes and reduce the time spend in workwear management for example.
What is RFID and what it allows us to do?
RFID means wireless communication, which uses radio waves to identify and track objects. At Lindström this means tracking and identification of workwear and other textiles. There are three different radio frequencies used: Low Frequency, High Frequency and Ultra High Frequency. And like radio frequencies there are three types of RFID tags as well; passive, semi-passive and active.
Lindström RFID solution is based on Ultra High Frequency (UHF) radio waves with passive UHF tags. To ensure compatibility with other RFID devices, the UHF tag is a unified world standard. This standardized and widely used RFID technology provides us with many opportunities. It’s affordable, reliable and supports our business in the best possible way.
UHF tags read range can be even 5 meters and hundreds of them can be identified in a few seconds. We can fill the whole container with workwear and read them all at once by simply moving the container through RFID gate reader. Passive UHF tags don’t do anything without readers. They don’t have own batteries but need readers to get energy. And to be clear, the technology does not track people, only textiles.
Tags telling the story of the textile
RFID tagged textiles tells us the story of a textile every time when the tag is read by a reader. This means we can utilize RFID data and give a transparent view on number, use and circulation of textiles for our customers.
There are countless of ways to utilize UHF tags and RFID technology in textiles. We have started with workwear and hotel textiles, but it is exciting to see what other possibilities we can have in the future.
