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Wine and Brandy Maker in High Spirits Over RFID
After about a year of testing and installing the RFID system under the direction of Hanno Mutton, KWV's IT department manager, the company began employing it this month to track its barrels. It began by tagging new barrels upon their arrival, says RFID Institute's senior application engineer, Kevin O'Neill and is currently in the process of tagging all of its approximately 70,000 existing barrels, located in several sites in South Africa.
When KWV requires additional barrels, it places an order with a cooper. As a batch of barrels arrive at KWV's Paarl facility, they come plastic-wrapped with a paper order listing the details about that batch, such as its wood grain (indicating the oak's quality) and a batch identification number.
While unwrapping the barrels for use, KMV employees attach an Alien UHF EPC Gen 2 Squiggle tag to each barrel's face (the front of a barrel when turned on its side), says Stephen Crocker, Alien's director of sales and channel management in Europe, Middle East and Asia (EMEA) and India. They then utilize a handheld RFID interrogator with a Windows SE-based PDA, designed by RFID Institute, to capture every tag's unique ID number. At that point, the workers follow prompts on the PDA to indicate the batch number assigned to that barrel, as well as the cooper, the forest from which the barrel's wood originated, and the wood grain.
This data is then transmitted, via a Wi-Fi connection, directly to the company's SAP system, where RFID Institute's Barrel Tracking System software creates a record for each barrel. Throughout the life of the barrel, KWV employees can look up an individual barrel by ID number, prompting a page to appear showing the barrel's status, as well as when, where and how it has been used, and such background information as the cooper of origin.
Employees store the barrels on racks fitted with RFID tags, to indicate the row and storage-area location numbers. A worker scans just one barrel in a particular batch, as well as the rack RFID tag, and the system then links the entire batch to that specified location.
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When KWV requires additional barrels, it places an order with a cooper. As a batch of barrels arrive at KWV's Paarl facility, they come plastic-wrapped with a paper order listing the details about that batch, such as its wood grain (indicating the oak's quality) and a batch identification number.
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| A closeup view of a tagged barrel. |
While unwrapping the barrels for use, KMV employees attach an Alien UHF EPC Gen 2 Squiggle tag to each barrel's face (the front of a barrel when turned on its side), says Stephen Crocker, Alien's director of sales and channel management in Europe, Middle East and Asia (EMEA) and India. They then utilize a handheld RFID interrogator with a Windows SE-based PDA, designed by RFID Institute, to capture every tag's unique ID number. At that point, the workers follow prompts on the PDA to indicate the batch number assigned to that barrel, as well as the cooper, the forest from which the barrel's wood originated, and the wood grain.
This data is then transmitted, via a Wi-Fi connection, directly to the company's SAP system, where RFID Institute's Barrel Tracking System software creates a record for each barrel. Throughout the life of the barrel, KWV employees can look up an individual barrel by ID number, prompting a page to appear showing the barrel's status, as well as when, where and how it has been used, and such background information as the cooper of origin.
Employees store the barrels on racks fitted with RFID tags, to indicate the row and storage-area location numbers. A worker scans just one barrel in a particular batch, as well as the rack RFID tag, and the system then links the entire batch to that specified location.
