Valcambi: a Golden Traceability

As we have seen at the RFID&Wireless IOT Tomorrow in Dusseldorf, RFID is on the crest of a wave again.

RFID is often mentioned in the luxury fashion world, where the value of the article, be it clothes, a bag, some perfume, an armchair…, is quite high and where it is therefore crucial to be able to guarantee product authenticity, combating black and grey markets (the latter selling authentic garments through non-authorised channels), but RFID is also fundamental to monitor logistics and shipments from HQ and points of sale.

But this is certainly not the only emerging sector: in recent years, many manufacturing companies have adopted RFID to optimise their production and logistic processes.

Valcambi SA, internationally-active enterprise based in Balerna (Switzerland), which refines gold and produces gold ingots, coins, medals and other products for the jewellery and watchmaking sectors, somehow represents a blend of these two worlds.

Thanks to an RFID system, coordinated by our software platform .onID, Valcambi SA traces their product handling in some given areas of their premises, providing their operators with information regarding correct composition of packages and boxes (these containing loose objects, not individually labelled).

Such information allows:

• Upstream error identification, thus making shipments more precise
• Monitoring every single handling operation
• Simplifying picking operations and warehouse goods control

A smart system, the one adopted by Valcambi SA which, besides managing multi-level tagging (multilevel package management), integrates RFID readings with weighing system data.

It is therefore possible to cross-check data, guaranteeing maximum solution reliability, given the high value of the goods traced (ingots, gold coins…).