Objective Activities in the laundry sector cover washing, steaming and repairing of personal, industrial, medical and recreational laundry. Main bottleneck in the current laundry process, is the manual selection of different types of laundry and customer batches. This means a high labour intensity; relatively high fault sensitivity and no optimal use of capacity, equipment and transportation. On top of this, companies are confronted with increasing external pressures: changing customer demands, stricter environmental legislation, increasing need to improve labour conditions and increasing competition from the disposables industry. To be able to cope with these factors, to reduce costs and to be able to operate in a competitive way, there is a need to automate the sorting steps of the laundry process. Recent progress in identification, recognition and sorting technologies, opens up the way for the development of a fully integrated automated laundrv svstem (opposed to partial, non-compatible solutions). In the past much effort has been conducted to reduce the amount of energy used in laundries. This project optimizes the laundry process from another angle and has amongst other advantages also impact on energy savings. The general goals of the project: quality improvement, time and costs saving through reduction of sorting faults optimal use of capacity through reduction of rewash and optirnal logistics achieve high flexibility to meet changing customer demands and changing workforce improvement of labour conditions improvement of insight in and control of the process leading tO reduction of costs The technical objectives: development of a recognition svstem, based on washable tags development of identification algorithm and protocol, linking recognition to sorting sequences and physical action development of an advanced sorting system by development of carousels to overcome current capacity and speed restrictions. development of an information storage standard for the washable tags development of training programmes to effectively apply and operate the new system in laundries actual integration of the 3 major components and testing of the new system on a pilot scale. Major innovations are found in each of the 3 development lines, but moreover in the integration of developments in these technological fields into a fully integrated laundry system. The structure of the project is based on parallel development, enabling optimal interaction. Since the key objective is the integration of technologies to realize a laundry svstem, the work is structured in a number of parallel conducted development lines, in which subtasks are scheduled for maximum interaction and integration of results. The envisaged project is end-user driven, the end-users from five member states (laundries in NL, DE, BE, AT and FI) define the system and steer the RTD performers. The project will have a duration of two years. Exploitation and dissemination of the project results is ensured through the membership of each laundry in a larger group. These groups are aimed at offering recognizable identical services to the customer (marketing-strategy) and at cooperation by exchanging knowledge about technological developments. Furthermore, intensive cooperation between the end-users and RTD performers will facilitate the exploitation and dissemination of the results Fields of science social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment Programme(s) FP4-BRITE/EURAM 3 - Specific research and technological development programme in the field of industrial and materials technologies, 1994-1998 Topic(s) 0101 - Incorporation of new technologies into production systems Call for proposal Data not available Funding Scheme CRS - Cooperative research contracts Coordinator Rentex Zeetex BV EU contribution No data Address 30,Verijn Stuartweg 4462 GE Goes Netherlands See on map Total cost No data Participants (8) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all Ait BV Netherlands EU contribution No data Address 313,Vaalserbergweg 5602 JA Eindhoven See on map Total cost No data Bilger GmbH Germany EU contribution No data Address 17,Christian-Weiß-Straße 78647 Trossingen See on map Total cost No data Centrum voor Innovatie van Opleidingen_Stichting Netherlands EU contribution No data Address 1,Pettelaarpark 1 5200 BP 's Hertogenbosch See on map Total cost No data Gödde GmbH & Co. KG Germany EU contribution No data Address 78,Alexanderstraße 58097 Hagen See on map Total cost No data Technico Machinebouw BV Netherlands EU contribution No data Address 9,Admiraal Helfrichweg 2315 VC Leiden See on map Total cost No data Textielreiniging Sneeuwwitje Belgium EU contribution No data Address 10,Schansdijkstraat 3665 As See on map Total cost No data Textilservice Brolli GmbH Austria EU contribution No data Address 324,Wiener Straße 8051 Graz See on map Total cost No data Uudenmaan Sairaalapesula Oy Finland EU contribution No data Address 8,Isonkiventie 4200 Kerava See on map Total cost No data
