PAR STOCK AND STOCK AGEING
How much linen should you hold in circulation?
Enough to hold par with the stock that is genuinely circulating — which is usually less than the stock on the books. IntelTagRFID is a UHF-RFID textile tracking and laundry reconciliation platform that buckets every item by days since its last scan, so the holding splits into linen actually in use, linen sitting somewhere off-cycle, and linen that exists only as a purchase record. Par is then set against the first group rather than the total.
Why par is usually set against a fiction
Par is normally calculated from what was bought, less an assumed loss rate. Both halves of that are estimates, and the error compounds every year. The practical symptom is familiar: the books say there is plenty, the floor runs short, and the response is to buy more of the same item — which then joins the stock nobody can find.
Days since last scan
Every item is bucketed by how long it has been silent, in bands running from seven days through to never seen, split by clean and dirty status and broken down by description and location. The bands are the useful part: a seven-day bucket is normal circulation, a ninety-day bucket is a question, and a never-seen bucket is stock that was tagged and never entered service at all.
Stalled stock is not lost stock
An item with no recent activity that has not reached end of life is reported as stalled rather than consumed, because it may simply be in off-cycle storage. This distinction has a direct financial consequence: stalled stock can be recovered into circulation, and counting it as loss both overstates shrinkage and triggers replacement purchasing that was never needed.
Physical stock-takes against the record
Handheld readers run scan sessions that are reconciled against recorded locations, so a count becomes a comparison rather than a fresh start. A stock-take then answers a sharper question than how many are there: which specific items the record expected here and the floor does not have, and which items are here that the record had somewhere else.
Common questions
Every item is bucketed by days since its last scan, in bands running from seven days up to never seen, split by clean and dirty status and broken down by description and location.
Stalled means no recent activity but not yet at end of life — it may be in off-cycle storage and recoverable. Lost is reported separately, because counting the two together overstates shrinkage and triggers unnecessary purchasing.
Items past ninety days and never-seen items form the follow-up list. Shorter bands are normal circulation and are not useful as an action list.
It replaces purchased stock less an assumed loss rate with the stock that is demonstrably circulating, so par is set against items in use rather than against a total that includes stock nobody can locate.
Handheld readers run scan sessions that are reconciled against recorded locations, so the result is a comparison against the expected position rather than a standalone count.
Yes. Stock aging reports by description, location and property, so patterns can be compared between sites instead of inferred from a group total.
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