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Foundation Logic Systems, in partnership with Cintas, announced that the Ameristar casinos are installing Foundation Logic System’s Uniform Management software  at all of their casinos, two of which are replacing a competitor for better data accuracy, improved data management and ease of use.


The Ameristar casinos are located in Black Hawk, CO, Council Bluffs, IA, East Chicago, IN, Kansas City, MO,  St. Charles, MO, Vicksburg, MS and Jackpot, NV.


All uniform systems will operate off of one Central Server that is located at Ameristar’s Headquarters in Las Vegas; the advantages to Ameristar with this configuration are as follows:

• No local server is required which provides a cost savings.


• The administrator can oversee all activities in aggregate from one location and can therefore benchmark inventory utilization at each location. This overview will allow for the most efficient operations to be instituted at all locations.


• The IT department can manage maintenance and support issues from one central location.


• Updates can be done on a single platform.


• Cintas, who is managing all the uniform rooms, can access all locations remotely to make global purchasing decisions.

Our new system to track and manage all company assets using UHF RFID tags. The same software that has been tracking linens and garments for years has now been adapted to track all of your assets. Because of evolutionary advances in UHF RFID technology, tag manufacturers have developed tags that are readable on metal surfaces. Foundation Logic Systems’ asset management software was designed to monitor any asset, any place, anytime.

No matter what kind or assets you own, imagine taking inventory in seconds of all the assets in any area on your property with a hand scanner.

Imagine setting up the system so you can loan assets to employees or customers with a return date and getting a report when those assets are not returned on time.

Imagine moving assets from place to place and having access to the history of every transaction.

Imagine having the ability to monitor repairs of your assets and being alerted when maintenance is due.

Well, stop imagining because NOW this and more is all possible with Foundation Logic Systems’ Asset Manager!

I come across a lot of people who ask me innumerable questions with regards to RFID and one of the most common questions is whether RFID is a new concept and I feel there is a strong urgency to educate people on this concept. Today I will tell you something about the history of RFID and on reading it you yourself will be able to decide whether RFID is a new or an old technology.

Let me tell you that during World War II there was no means to identify whether the plane entering the airspace was of a friend or a foe and this created a lot of confusion for the forces out there. In order to deal with this problem the British came up with a friend or foe system where a transmitter was placed on all their planes so that on communication they came to know that the plane belonged to them and it wasn’t shot down in an air of confusion. It was only during the fifties and the sixties that Europe, Japan and United States that research was conducted in the area of RFID and companies started using it in anti theft systems. In the seventies U.S. Energy Department requested Los Alamos National Laboratory for devising a technique for tracking nuclear material and after that it even came up with an RFID system for tracking cattle. Mario Cardullo patent for a passive radio transponder with memory in 1973 is regarded as the first true ancestor of modern RFID. In 1983 Charles Walton got the first patent with the name RFID and the rest all you know is history but I heard a lot many people saying it is a new technology, do you all still agree with it?

I hope I didn’t put you all to sleep. Wishing you a great weekend ahead!!

Is Barcode cheaper for Uniform Tracking than RFID or vice versa?

This article used material gleaned from a July 7, 2009 article on RFID Weblog by Gautam.


“On the 35th birthday of Barcode there is still a myth prevailing in the whole industry that barcode is cheaper when compared to RFID.”


For Uniform Tracking, barcodes, after all cost just 15 cents each while the electronic tags used in RFID cost $1.00 each


Mark Roberti at RFID Journal seems to question the prevailing theory which says that barcode technology is cheaper when compared to RFID technology. He says “calling barcodes cheaper than RFID tags is the same as saying that a wood handled hammer is cheaper when compared to nail gun.”


Like Mark Roberti did for a retail business in his article, we at Foundation Logic Systems are using a very simple example for Uniform Tracking to show that the overall cost of implementing RFID is less when compared to barcode.


Let’s say there are two hotels, each owning 15,000 garments. The cost of the barcodes in Hotel A, at 15 cents apiece, would be $2,250. The cost of the RFID tags in Hotel B, on the other hand, would be $15,000 at $1.00 each. “Barcodes look like a much better deal, sure but remember, neither hotel has yet taken inventory or scanned garments to and from the cleaners.”


Let’s say each hotel decides that in order to maintain an accurate inventory, it will conduct an inventory once a month. Each month, two employees at Hotel A would take a total of 40 hours to scan the barcodes on every item. The total labor cost would be $800 per month, or $9,600. At Hotel B, meanwhile, it would take one worker two hours to read all of the RFID tags. The total labor cost each day would, thus, be $20 or $240 per year.


Collecting the data necessary to operate efficiently with barcodes would thus cost Hotel A $11,850 ($2,250 for barcodes, plus $9,600 in labor); whereas it would cost Hotel B $15,240 to collect the data it requires ($15,000 in tags, plus $240 in labor). So collecting the information needed to maintain high inventory accuracy would actually cost slightly more with RFID than with barcodes. But how much time is taken to scan barcoded items to the cleaner and scanning them again when the cleaned items are returned. It’s not unusual for the process to take one employee 3 hours each day scanning barcoded items in and out, whereas items with RFID tags take seconds to read. So to scan barcodes the total labor cost would be $30 per day or $9,360 assuming that this process is done 6 days a week.


To operate efficiently with barcodes it would cost Hotel A $21,210 ($2,250 for barcodes, $9,600 in labor for inventory plus $9,360 to scan to and from the cleaners); whereas the costs for Hotel B would still be roughly $15,240 to do a monthly inventory and send and return garments from the cleaner ($15,000 in tags, $240 in labor to take inventory and virtually nothing to scan garments to and from the cleaners).


Therefore, collecting the information needed to maintain high inventory accuracy and scanning items to and from the cleaners would actually cost more with barcodes than with RFID.


Mark Roberti says that he realizes he simplified things in his example of the retail business. But he goes on to say: “You would also need to factor in the cost of handheld barcode interrogators, RFID scanners, software and so forth. But you get the point, and there should be no disputing it: Collecting data is not cheaper with barcodes than with RFID tags.”


There is another factor that must be considered in evaluating the cost of barcodes versus RFID tags. It is estimated that a typical uniform can be cleaned or laundered roughly 50 times before it needs to be replaced. Manufacturer tests have determined that washable RFID tags can go through at least 200 cleaning cycles before they begin to fail and this appears to be a conservative estimate. Theoretically then, RFID tags can be used on four different garments which will essentially reduce their price to 25 cents per use. Also, one can’t ignore the fact that barcodes tend to fade if the chemicals used in cleaning are too harsh, which means sometimes more than one barcode label must be installed on a garment.


“One also needs to realize that when compared with barcodes, RFID completes the job faster and if measured then it’s 75 to 80% faster. Data collection with RFID is definitely cheaper as compared to barcode technology and is far more accurate and one doesn’t need to deploy too much labor. Even the overall performance of the staff seems to suffer as a result of wrong data and probably these factors are ignored by most of the companies and as a result they are not able to realize how much they tend to lose by not implementing RFID.”

Something very exciting is taking place in the Hospitality Industry and Foundation Logic Systems is leading the way with their UHF RFID Linen Manager and Uniform Manager tracking systems! What is RFID you ask? RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify individual items. There are several methods of identifying objects using RFID, but the most common is to store a serial number that identifies an item on a microchip that is attached to an antenna (called an RFID transponder or an RFID tag). Unlike Barcodes, RFID does not require line-of-sight. Radio frequencies are used to communicate between the tag and reader. This means that an item can contain its label, its unique identification, on the inside.


Marv Tulman, CEO, and his team are taking the industry by storm with this new innovation, which allows hotels and laundries to keep track of their inventories, especially linen and terry products which can run up a pretty penny in losses throughout the year.  Their first installations were done last year at The Hilton Bonnet Creek Orlando and Andaz Hollywood-both using the system to track their uniforms.  Early this year, both systems were installed at the Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver, to track their employee uniforms as well as their high end linen and terry.  Since then, they have closed deals with the Waldorf=Astoria Towers in NYC and Milum Textiles in Phoenix.  While each of these properties has their own uniqueness in how the system works for them, the bottom line is that they all will know what they have in inventory at all times.


Just imagine being an employee (and some of you reading this may well be) of a large hotel and working in the Uniform or Laundry room with the responsibility of taking inventory manually or through some kind of archaic method.  How time consuming is that?  Now imagine holding a portable hand scanner and going through a rack of uniforms or a linen closet and taking inventory in minutes.  Yeah!  It certainly will make your job easier and much more pleasant and before you know it, everyone will be volunteering to do inventory.


Stay tuned for more news next week.

Occupying the upper floors of The Waldorf Astoria, the prestigious Waldorf Towers located at 50^th Street between Park and Lexington, NYC will be using The RFID Linen Manager Hotel Version to track and control their linen and terry inventory.