Bringing Automation into Handwashing
Audio Blog Version:
The power of RFID technology applied to enterprise sanitisation
Rigorous hygiene standards have always been a prerogative of those human spaces where the accidental spread of potentially hazardous viral or bacterial agents must be prevented at all costs: clinics, medical environments, senior residences, schools, pharmaceutical laboratories, food production factories and points of sale – just to mention few.
However, in the “analogic” world many sanitisation processes have been solely left to the good will and compliance of the operators involved, with the inevitable consequence of leaving hygiene standards not always fully and meticulously met – when the associated infection risk would have already irreversibly occurred, often escaping any surveillance.
Today, ever more, this is a risk that cannot and must not be run anymore, due to the current epidemiologic alerts and its new compliance requirements.
That is where the power of 4.0 automation comes into play: it can flip around risky hygiene scenario’s into quality controlled routines, while addressing at once business requirements that involve not only end-customer experience but also operations and asset management, down to HR and even legal areas.
Being able to automate a simple – yet critical – process like handwashing through the utilisation of an IoT stack, allows us in fact to:
- Track always a hand washing event and attribute that event to its respective actor for compliance control (i.e. an employee, an operator);
- Grant or prevent the access to critical areas to operators, based on their sanitisation protocols compliance;
- Ensure a more rigorous and waste free hand washing routine, by involving touchless soap dispensers, able to supply only the needed quantity of soap per each wash event;
- Build customers’ retention and satisfaction: spaces that are customer facing will gain the trust and loyalty of their users by guaranteeing them the highest hygiene standards on site. When customers of a supermarket will experience a greater degree of attention to hygiene by the retailer, their propensity to return and buy from that store will increase over time, with the inherent revenue advantage that this entails for the business.
Keonn RFID-based technology, part of TD SYNNEX portfolio, can perfectly serve all these outcomes with AdvanWash.
AdvanWash is a modular hand washing station that detects, through an electronic sensor, the presence of the user’s hands to automatically dispense soap, hydrogel and hot water/air. It also includes an RFID antenna and reader, able to capture in realtime the unique identification of the RFID badge worn by the employees who are washing their hands.
With this system in place, it is possible to pair up the hand-washing event record with an operator identification, tracking who washed their hands and when. All data will flow realtime onto the cloud or, in alternative, a local server.
Additional integrations make it possible also to add acoustic reminders as well as implement selected access controls to nearby doors or gates, in order to automate the entrance to critical areas, subject to the prior identification of admitted personnel and the hand-washing event completed. The latter set-up would additionally require an access control server and software that can easily operate the system of permissions validation/entrance.
Thanks to Keonn AdvanWash, system integrators that have in their customer base restaurants, supermarkets, schools, offices, clinics or factories can now gear up these spaces with a tech-stack that is modular, integrated, scalable, affordable, easy to deploy and perfectly customisable.
The TD SYNNEX team is always available to provide the necessary guidance on this solution, a must-have for any enterprise that cares for hygiene compliance, both short term and long term, both for the “new normal” and the “business as usual”.
For more information on all of our Return to the Workplace solutions for continuity, safety and productivity please visit www.iotsolutions.techdata.com/returntoworkplace
Retail and Healthcare IoT | Data Industry lead
TD SYNNEX EMEA