Textile Inventory Control Solutions For Textile Loss in Hotels

Background

The Waldorf Astoria is a luxury hotel serving high-end tourists and locals alike. With 217 rooms and a brand commitment to upscale, luxury accommodation, it needs to keep staff looking tip-top, and linens like tablecloths, towels and sheets impeccable.

Top Five Achievements

With Polytex workwear and textile inventory control, Waldorf Astoria has gained control over inventory, for significant cost savings alongside quality improvements.

Accurate inventory stocking
Fewer lost items
Extended lifespan of textiles
Data-based purchasing decisions
Lower laundry bills

Customer Testimonials

With Polytex, we are now able to properly manage our inventory, far more so than we ever could do before.

Hadar Brandman

Housekeeping Manager, Waldorf Astoria

Customer Needs

Priding itself on world-class service and attention to detail, Waldorf Astoria wanted to streamline the availability of clean uniforms and textiles while improving their quality. As a large hotel, it was struggling with textile losses and excessive wear and tear due to over-laundering. It sought a more accurate way to monitor usage, to avoid overpaying for laundry.

Requirements

The Waldorf Astoria wanted to track staff uniforms as well as guest room textiles to gain visibility into usage and real-time location. Overall, it aimed to improve inventory management and reduce costs.

Monitor what goes in and out: The ability to know which items were taken and by whom was crucial to inventory management.
Ensure accurate inventory count: The system needed to support monthly inventory counts to streamline procurement and laundry services planning.
Reduce lost items: Per-item monitoring was required to increase staff accountability and reduce losses of uniforms and guest room textiles.

Improve durability: Minimizing over-laundering and identifying higher-quality products were required to extend textile lifespan and reduce purchasing costs.

Solution

In 2023, Waldorf Astoria added RFID tags to all uniforms and guest linens and installed a comprehensive Polytex textile inventory control solution. For dispensing and returning of folded uniforms, the hotel uses a D200 PRO unit and R210 UHF chute. Hanging uniforms are dispensed from the uniform warehouse. The hotel also has a Polytex CR500 cart reader for handling tablecloths, napkins, towels and sheets, and uses two Tabletop Readers and two Handheld Scanners for inventory management.

All workwear, both folded and hanging, as well as all guest textiles are managed through Polytex Total Care Manager cloud-based software.

Easy and accurate inventory management: All tagged items are easily scanned at any time, and the software is updated instantly.
Controlled access to uniforms and textiles: Staff enter their employee number to take items and return them.
Visibility into inventory: The system provides an accurate picture that considers losses, actual consumption, and the quality of items in stock.

Results

The Polytex workwear management solution streamlines managing both employee uniforms and guest linens, improving efficiency and accountability across hotel operations, and resulting in well-maintained, consistently stocked textiles, while reducing laundering and procurement costs.

No more missing items: Through full-cycle monitoring, the hotel has almost eliminated losses. If workwear or textile items go missing, thrown in the trash accidentally or left at employees’ homes, the system knows in real time.
Reduced textile consumption: Textiles are purchased and laundered according to real need, not based on guesstimates or assumptions.
Complete textile inventory control: Once a month, the hotel does a comprehensive inventory count, using the handheld readers to go through stocks on each floor. The Polytex system’s reports help with determining what’s needed, supporting streamlined procurement.
Reduced laundry charges: Accurate control over inventory helps reduce laundry charges for losses, as well as the overall cost of laundering. Instead of charging by weight, which can deviate significantly due to wet items, the hotel is able to pay per item – a more accurate and less expensive payment model.
Increased lifespan of textiles: Polytex’s textile inventory control has significantly improved the condition of textiles by reducing unnecessary laundering. Textiles, particularly sheets, now last longer.
Better quality textiles: Polytex’s workwear software ’s provides a notetaking feature that helps with evaluating suppliers. The hotel can monitor performance to identify the most durable uniforms and linens and cross-reference them with suppliers to make informed procurement decisions.