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 system from
automatic identification (auto-ID) solutions provider Sato
Material Co. Ltd.
The solution Sato developed for the hotel includes buck-
le-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 man-
ufacturer. 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.
Nowadays, there’s no more need for
manual recordkeeping. With the new
system, workers are able to scan multiple bottles via con-tactless operation and automatically register inventory in
the hotel’s purchasing system.
So far, the resort has tagged about 10,000 bottles with the
reusable tags—a process that requires about 10 minutes
per 12-bottle case, according to Sato. The result has been a
drastic drop in stocktaking time, it reports. At one restaurant in the resort, two workers previously spent eight hours
apiece ( 16 hours total) on stocktaking. After the upgrade,
the task only required one staffer and two hours, for an
88-percent labor savings.
“Thanks to the RFID system, we were able to both streamline our painstaking stocktaking processes and reduce the
number of mistakes from human error,” Tokyo Baycourt
Club head of operations Katsuhiro Kawamura said in a
statement. Based on the project’s results, he added, “We are
looking at using RFID for other products and expanding
the system to hotels in the future.”
Buckle-on RFID tags make short work of stocktaking at Tokyo resort hotel.
Full-bodied RFID system helps hotelier
manage wine inventory
have to support the military’s requirement for precise
product traceability to ensure that a potentially defective
product, such as wire with inadequate jacket insulation,
could quickly be identified and quarantined from sale. That
meant the software had to be able to maintain precise data
for every item, including manufacture lot
information, date and location of manufacture, and the expiration date along with
any associated documents.
After considering its options, Sea chose
PathGuide Technologies Inc.’s Latitude
WMS. Over the next three years, the two
worked together to develop enhancements
that reflected Sea’s unique needs and pro-
cesses. As a result, the wire and cable company has been
able to meet its goals while improving its inventory man-
agement, the software firm says. Among other benefits,
the Sea sales team now has access to real-time data on
all inventory, while the company’s purchasing team sees
what’s in stock and what needs to be re-ordered, according
to Bothell, Wash.-based PathGuide.
The new software also helped warehouse workers cut
hours off the time required to verify product details for
customers with special requirements, such as where the
material was made, the minimum length
of wire, and the regulatory revision level,
PathGuide says.
“We were impressed by the number of
different enhancements that PathGuide
was able to tailor to our needs,” Nick
Meyer, Sea’s warehouse manager, said in a
statement. “Even simple things, like auto-
mating the labeling on the picking side,
have made a huge difference. Our pickers no longer need to
handwrite everything, so it’s much more professional. And
when a customer requests an urgent overnight shipment,
our team can instantly relay information about availability
to ensure rapid response.”
