Fallsview Casino Resort Selects RFID to Track Uniforms
InvoTech Systems, Inc., a laundry-, linen- and uniform-cleaning system provider, has announced that Fallsview Casino Resort located in Niagara Falls, Ontario, has selected its GIMS Uniform System, which features ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID technology. The resort is a $1 billion gaming complex offering views of Niagara Falls—both the American Falls and the Canadian Horseshoe Falls. The GIMS inventory-control system, which employs RFID tags to help organizations track and manage linens, uniforms and other garments, will interface with White Conveyors' U-Pick-It System to provide around-the-clock automated uniform distribution to the property's 3,500 uniformed team members.

The GIMS solution includes Impinj Speedway Revolution readers, AN720 and AN480 antennas from Motorola Solutions and passive EPC Gen 2 RFID tags provided by Fujitsu Frontech North America. The U-Pick-It system is an automated solution that automatically delivers the proper uniform to an employee when he or she presents the appropriate credentials. Integration with GIMS means that staff members at Fallsview Casino Resort need only present their RFID-enabled employee ID card to an RFID reader, and the system will automatically sort, find and deliver the correct uniform.

Plans call for the new uniform inventory-tracking system to become fully operational in September 2011. "We selected GIMS to achieve greater labor efficiency and stronger uniform-tracking controls, and to maintain a perpetual inventory of our substantial garment investment for our 3,500 uniformed staff," said Andrei Kun, Fallsview Casino Resort's executive director of resort operations, in a prepared statement. In addition, the GIM UHF RFID tracking system can scan, inventory and generate reports for entire carts of uniforms, thereby creating efficiencies by eliminating the labor-intensive job of hand-counting and manual recordkeeping. UHF RFID tags are sewn into uniforms that enable automated recordkeeping as the garments move into and out of the uniform department, as well as to and from laundries.