Buckle-on RFID tags make short work of stocktaking at Tokyo resort hotel.
When managers at the Tokyo Baycourt Club Hotel & Spa Resort needed a better system for tracking the bottles in their wine cellar, they turned to a technology that may be new to the hospitality industry but will be familiar to logistics managers everywhere: radio-frequency identification, or RFID.
Located in Tokyo’s Odaiba entertainment district, the resort hotel stocks roughly 5,000 bottles of wine for its restaurants, bars, and lounges. Before the switch to RFID, stocktaking operations required sommeliers to carefully handle each bottle and enter the details manually into the purchasing system. In a bid to streamline operations, the hotel began a search for a faster and more accurate inventory management system. After evaluating various alternatives, it chose an RFID-enabled inventory management system from automatic identification (auto-ID) solutions provider Sato Material Co. Ltd.
The solution Sato developed for the hotel includes buckle-on RFID tags that can be attached to wine bottles of virtually any size. Specially engineered for use with liquids, the ultra-high-frequency (UHF) tags allow for error-free reads from as far away as 20 inches, according to the manufacturer. Because the tags are not directly affixed to the bottles, there is no effect on the wine quality. As an added measure of protection for what is often high-value merchandise, the RFID tags are paired with security labels to prevent them from falling off or being replaced.
Source: Full-bodied RFID system helps hotelier manage wine inventory – DC Velocity