Wednesday 09 September 2009, TAGSYS Pilots PAC ID TEXTILE, a Government-Funded Project for the Development of RFID Solutions to Identify and Monitor Textile Products

September 9, 2009 – TAGSYS, the global leader in item-level RFID infrastructure, today announced that PAC ID Textile, the R&D project the Company has been piloting, has been selected for financial support by the French Government. This program involves the development of an innovative integrated solution, based on UHF (Ultra-High Frequency) RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology to improve the management and traceability of all performance reusable textile products such as medical drapes, scrubs, labcoats, patient apparel, work apparel, towels and mats. The project is also endorsed by two French competitiveness clusters: SCS and Techtera.

The funding and launch of PAC ID Textile opens a new era in the medical and hospitality sectors worldwide, with the development of an innovative solution for the electronic surveillance of textile products to fight against theft, to improve the management of textile supply and to reduce manual handling of textile items to comply with hygiene regulations and limit the spread of diseases.

The solution includes the design of a small encapsulated RFID tag coupled with a revolutionary thread antenna and an intelligent detection system to enable the identification and tracking of the entire textile supply chain.

The project offers a dual perspective, especially for the medical sector:

Reduce expenses: an average-size industrial laundry spends approximately 50% of its yearly textile product purchase budget (linens and workwear) fir theft and loses, which represents over 4% of the laundry’ global operating budget.

Help prevent disease transmission by contributing to reducing manual handling of contaminated textile items. RFID technology will enable, for example, to inventory in a few seconds the entire content of a trolley filled with garments, without having to handle them manually.

« Thanks to the outstanding support of the SCS cluster and the financial help of the French government, we can continue our efforts to develop a global integrated solution able to rapidly inventory all textile products coming in and out of a building and answer the specific needs of our customers in terms of theft control and health security measures. » explains Christophe Loussert, Vice-President RFID Solutions at TAGSYS. « I am eager to put to work our UHF RFID expertise combined with the skills of all of the actors involved in this project to develop such an innovative solution».

The project lead by TAGSYS includes nine additional business entities which are all members of the SCS or Techtera clusters: SOFILA (expert in synthetic and artificial thread transformation), SCALAGENT (mediation software provider for networked smart devices), JENSEN (leading equipment provider for industrial laundries), MAUGIN (industrial sewing machine and related equipment provider), ELIS (European leading service provider for the rental and maintenance of professional clothing and textile articles), IN2MP and LEAT (engineering labs), CIU SANTE (innovation platform for the SCS cluster), and the Aix-en-Provence hospital laundry.

For further information, please contact:

Angeline Fraud
Tél: +33 (0)4 91 27 57 56
angeline.fraud@tagsysrfid.com