Textile Services Magazine, a publication of the uniform industry group TRSA, takes a behind-the-scenes look at Roscoe’s new sorting system, detailing the company-wide effort behind our installation of the sleekly efficient German Kannegiesser ETECH system last year.
The story, which appears in the July/August issue, recounts the painstaking work done in preparation for the most modern sorting system in the industry, including modifications to our 100-year-old building and the dismantling of the old system – much of it done by our own team members, and all of it done without any interruption of service.
Working Nights and Weekends to Get the Job Done
The building underwent numerous procedures to accommodate the installation, including the breaking out of a first-floor ceiling to make room for the fork lifts used to take machinery parts to the second floor. The dismantling was done by an in-house crew working nights and weekends.
Roscoe President Jim Buik outlined the thinking that went into the decision to undertake such a dramatic renovation. “I wanted to be able to scale our operation to match the output of the wash floor that we put in 10 years ago,” Buik told the publication.
The goal was a system that could keep up with the company’s growth, tracking and moving garments more efficiently, and with the ability to scale up as needed.
The Kannegiesser uses Ultra High Frequency RF chips and a Positek RFID Tornado Scanner that can count and scan up to 1,000 garments at a time in 5 seconds and with near-perfect accuracy. A “bundle verifier” further fine-tunes the process by ensuring – not once, but twice – that every bundle contains exactly what it’s supposed to before it is loaded onto trucks for delivery.
State-of-the-Art Technology and Old-Fashioned Commitment
The project left Roscoe well-positioned for the future with improvements in tracking and quality even as throughput was doubled. It’s the story of a dramatic technological transformation, but looking back, some of the most amazing aspects are about as low-tech as you can get:
- To avoid any disruption of service, Roscoe team members “rehearsed” the process of hand sorting thousands of garments in preparation for the period of transition between the old and new system
- Roscoe team members dismantled the old system by hand- carrying 12,000 pounds of metal down three flights of stairs
It’s a story about innovation, but it’s also a story about a pretty amazing team.
Read the complete story here to learn more about how all of this was accomplished.
To learn more about what state-of-the-art technology and old-fashioned commitment to service can do for your work uniform program, give us a call or click on the link below.
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