Tracing the ‘story’ of each bottle during production
Fighting the grey market and protecting the authenticity of the product Fighting the grey market and protecting the authenticity of the product Veronese winery Dal Forno Romano chooses RFID/NFC technology to track the ‘story’ of each bottle during production, from the cages for the in-bottle ageing process to their packing into boxes for sale. The Autentico Chain technology makes it possible to: recognise the bottles contained in each box and the boxes that form each pallet, manage the bottle/box association with the dispenser during the picking phase, verify the authenticity of the wine using a smartphone via App and much more. To meet all these requirements, the Dal Forno Romano winery has adopted the solutions of the Italian IT company Autentico – RFID Global’s Top Solution Partner.
Located in Val d’Illasi, in the eastern part of Verona, the heart of the Valpolicella production area – the Dal Forno Romano winery was founded in 1983, inspired by the far-sighted vision of its founder, after whom it is named, who no longer wanted to give his grapes to the local cooperative winery, preferring to make his own wine. Today, the company tends to 34 hectares and sells around 200,000 prestigious bottles of Valpolicella Superiore, Amarone della Valpolicella and a small production of Recioto, a sweet raisin wine, the symbol of Verona, exporting to more than 50 countries worldwide, from North America to South-East Asia.
Autentico’s RFID solution for product authenticity
The most significant elements of the solution include the mobile smart tunnel that integrates Rfid readers and antennas to automatically detect the boxes and the bottles inside. The antennas are positioned on a pivoting structure with articulated joints, capable of tracking any type of box or wooden crate so that each product code can be accurately noted when an order is shipped and associated with the specific distributor. Once the boxes have been filled, the pallet is closed with cellophane and an RFID tag is applied to it. The entire production is thus unequivocally identifiable, from batch to bottle, from box to pallet.
“The project was implemented on the entire production of Amarone and Valpolicella Riserva in distribution tracked with NFC. The HF tunnel and the picking system also avoid any kind of order processing and shipping errors,” – explains Diego Lai, CEO of Autentico.
The RFID architecture for countering the grey market
Alongside the software and machinery designed by Autentico, the project relies on the HF-band RFID systems of RFID Global (Softwork Group).
- The mobile tunnel incorporates the LRM5400 reader connected to 2 antennas and is equipped with a touch screen panel PC, with integrated warehouse management software. This smart object makes it possible to detect the tags placed on the boxes and the bottles inside, performing a mass reading in real time.
- The RFID tablet for reading NFC tags allows the operator to manage the order processing in a timely and precise manner; the handheld device is equipped with the Autentico software, which is able to read the tags in the boxes and automate the relevant association between box and order.
“In addition to the distinctive qualities of RFID, especially the automatic, mass and unequivocal identification of the wine units (bottles, boxes and pallets), the solution implemented in the Veronese winery testifies to the crucial importance of the services, such as the mobile tunnel. The tunnel-integrated module is indeed an expression of the latest developments in HF-band RFID: flexibility in the configuration of the antennas and the ability to dialogue with other systems in the environment, not to mention the on-board Linux operating system,” – says Francesco Damiani, RFID Project Manager at RFID GLOBAL – Softwork Group.
In addition to enabling the traceability of every single bottle from production to sale and distribution, tagging the Dal Forno Romano wines has produced multiple benefits at the organisational level such as real-time inventory based on RFID; timely management of the warehouse and of order processing; consistency of the shipment with respect to the order (the winery has eliminated order preparation errors).
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