The Tokyo Baycourt Club Hotel & Spa Resort is using an RFID-enabled inventory management system – the first system of its kind used by Japan’s hotel industry – using technology from SATO.
 
The stocktaking operations of its roughly 5,000 bottles of wine for its restaurants, bars, and lounges previously required sommeliers to handle each bottle separately and manually enter details into the purchasing system. 
 
SATO provided the RFID system which includes RFID tags, security labels, RFID handy terminals and RFID table readers, as well as the management software.
 
After switching to RFID, Tokyo Baycourt Club can now scan multiple bottles with a contactless operation and automatically register inventory in its purchasing system.
 
“The hotel… wanted to streamline this work and boost accuracy,” said Kevin Leidheiser, senior leader, public relations for SATO. “In addition to labor savings and accuracy, another success factor was the prevention of inventory shrinkage of premium wines through more regular stocktaking – [going] from monthly to daily.”  
 
SATO first proposed the system in October 2016, with the test launch occurring in November 2017, according to Leidheiser. Full use of the system took place in January 2018.
 
The new system wasn’t without its challenges, however.
 
“Liquids and metals greatly affect read rates for UHF RFID tags,” Leidheiser said. “Since the tags are on the tops of the bottles, which are often covered by metal sealing foil, this also has a significant effect on read performance. The effect is amplified as the wines are closely packed in the wine cellar.
 
“To overcome these challenges, we went on-site to grasp the environment and solve the problem from there, and decided it was necessary to develop a custom RFID tag suitable for this application and user environment,” Leidheiser added. “We devised a technology to counter the effect of the liquid and sealing foil that could be attached to the wines with a metallic jig. After repeated experimentation to improve read rates, we enabled stable reading communication.”
 
At one restaurant in the resort, two workers previously spent eight hours apiece (16 hours total) before switching to RFID. After the upgrade, the operation only required one staff and two hours.
 
“In the past, only sommeliers had knowledge of the product, so they were the only ones who could perform stocktaking – and it was a laborious manual process,” Leiderheiser said. “[With] RFID, anyone can perform the task. The task of stocktaking is completed by 1 person now, while teams of 2 were necessary before: one for stocktaking, one for double checking.”
 
“[The RFID system] improve[d] the accuracy of inventory management by allowing us to see inventory right away, which minimizes our risk of lost bottles,” said Katsuhiro Kawamura, Tokyo Baycourt Club’s head of operations.
 
Since the buckle tags were developed for bottles, Leiderheiser hopes to see this technology put to use in other hotels. “It could be used for other types of alcohol such as high-end spirits for example,” he said.
 
Tokyo Baycourt Club is a resort hotel in Tokyo’s Odaiba entertainment district operated by RESORTTRUST, INC.