Fujitsu Frontech North America Inc., a leader in innovative technology and front-end solutions, and its parent company Fujitsu Frontech Limited, announced that it has shipped more than 2 million of its WT-A521/A522 RFID tags in the first quarter of 2013. Sales of the popular washable tag have been so robust that Fujitsu has doubled the production capacity at their manufacturing facility in Japan.
The rugged washable Fujitsu UHF RFID tags, which are wholly manufactured in Japan, have become very popular in both healthcare and hotel/hospitality. The small, flexible, RFID tags are sewn into, or attached to garments, linens, mats and accessory items allowing customers to scan hundreds of articles simultaneously to track their inventory anywhere in the hospital, hotel or at the warehouse.
Industrial laundries also use Fujitsu’s RFID tags to reduce operational costs caused by inaccurate shipping and receiving counts and costly manual counting of assets and deliverable items.
“The demand for our new Washable RFID tags in healthcare, hotels and hospitality as well as laundries has exceeded even our own expectations,” said Pat Cathey, senior vice president of Retail Products Group, Fujitsu Frontech North America Inc. “Our manufacturing facility in Japan reacted quickly to the increased demand by doubling capacity while assuring both product quality and reliability that is the hallmark of Fujitsu.”
Able to withstand more than two hundred washings, the harsh chemicals associated with dry cleaning, temperatures of 250 degrees Fahrenheit for drying and 400 degrees Fahrenheit for ironing, the tags are also designed to withstand the high pressure of water extraction systems up to 60 bars.
The rugged, non-magnetizing nature of the tag’s design allow it to be used in MRI rooms as well as typical industrial Autoclave systems used for healthcare and hospital sterilization. The small tags are extremely flexible, soft and durable which makes them ideal for flat linen, garments, accessories and a wide variety of laundered healthcare items.
“The WT-A522 and WT-A521 tags were developed exclusively by our engineering teams in Japan specifically for the demanding requirements of the global market,” said Takanao Ochiai, General Manager of Fujitsu Frontech’s RFID Systems Division. “Because of the exceptional success of the product, we are continuing to make significant investments in our facilities to grow our manufacturing capability into the future.”
With a reading range of more than six feet and the ability to read hundreds of tags simultaneously, the Fujitsu washable RFID tags represent a significant cost-saving solution compared to bar codes and other RFID systems, which require costly handling and single garment processing.
The materials used in the Fujitsu tag are intended for long deployment cycles, allowing the tag to be reused into another garment linen item within the intended life-cycle time, reducing total cost of ownership.
