Application of radio frequency identification technology in alcohol anti-counterfeiting

Incomplete statistics, by the end of 2020, the total output value of liquor industry has exceeded 438 billion 400 million yuan, of which Wine accounted for 65% of total output value, red wine accounted for more than 30% of the total output value. However, due to the continuous development and expansion of the liquor market, more and more illegal elements saw the great benefits, and the repeated prohibition of fake and shoddy alcoholic products greatly damaged the market environment. It has not only caused huge economic losses to enterprises, but also seriously affected people’s health and life safety. In this case, we urgently need a new anti-counterfeiting management technology to effectively stop the circulation of counterfeit and low-quality wine in the market and establish a one-stop operation mode of supervision and traceability. Radio frequency identification technology (RFID) can effectively solve this problem. The advantage of this technology is to add a unique electronic ID card to each bottle of wine. From the planting, storage, logistics and transportation of original products to the information of dealers, comprehensively record and provide query services, establish a life chain anti-counterfeiting and traceability management, and fundamentally eliminate the generation of fake wine.

Development status and application of RFID technology for alcohol at home and abroad

RFID technology and working principle

RFID (radio frequency identification) is a radio frequency identification technology, which is a kind of automatic identification technology. Conceptually, RFID is similar to bar code scanning. For bar code technology, it attaches the encoded bar code to the target and uses a special scanning reader to transmit the information from the strip magnet to the scanning reader by using the optical signal; RFID uses a special RFID reader and a special RFID tag that can be attached to the target, and uses the frequency signal to transmit the information from the RFID tag to the RFID reader.
After the tag enters the magnetic field, it receives the RF signal sent by the interpreter and sends the product information (passive tag) stored in the chip with the energy obtained by the induced current, or actively sends a signal of a certain frequency (active tag); The interpreter reads and decodes the information and sends it to the central information system for relevant data processing.

Development status of RFID abroad

As early as 1970, the United States began the civilian promotion of RFID. At the end of 1980, many companies in the United States and Europe began to produce RFID electronic tags. Now RFID technology has been applied to various fields, such as access control management, urban all-in-one card, logistics management, etc.
At the beginning of 2006, EJ Gallo wine company in the United States took the lead in applying RFID tags. Its main purpose is to conduct a wide range of warehouse inventory and cargo transportation. However, with the continuous development and expansion of the market, this technology is gradually applied to the traceability and anti-counterfeiting field of wine. In recent years, cases of fake vodka in Germany and 143 deaths caused by methanol poisoning in India have sprung up. In this case, most well-known foreign wine manufacturers have adopted RFID radio frequency monitoring means for effective supervision. By the beginning of 2010, RFID liquor Traceability Technology had been extended to 9 countries in Europe, the United States, India and other countries.

Development status of RFID in China

RFID technology is not widely used in China. It is only used in some fields, such as bus all-in-one card, postal parcel, second-generation ID card, etc., and its function and scope of action are very limited. In 2006, the Ministry of science and technology and other 15 ministries and commissions issued the white paper on China’s RFID technology policy, pointing out that the RFID industry will become a new growth point of the national economy, and emphasized in the application guide for major projects: vigorously develop RFID technology during the Eleventh Five Year Plan Period.

Counterfeiting of alcohol products in China has a long history. As early as 1994, Shanxi Suozhou counterfeit wine case caused more than a dozen poisoning deaths, which made Shanxi Fen Wine, the first of China’s four famous wines unrelated to this case, fall from the first place in the industry (“Fen boss”), beyond 20, and can not recover for more than ten years. Nowadays, it is an open fact that fake cigarettes and fake wine are popular. It is widely said in the market that the true and false ratio of Maotai is 1:9, that of Wuliangye is 1:3, and that of Yanghe is 1:1, etc. These are not statistically verifiable. At the end of 2009, Wuliangye, Maotai, Shuanggou and Luzhou Laojiao began to try to apply RFID technology for anti-counterfeiting management in response to the national management requirements for food safety Shuoyuan and improve the brand image of the industry. However, due to the immature scheme design and high cost, it can not be vigorously promoted and used.

RFID liquor anti-counterfeiting traceability management solution

Anti counterfeiting demand analysis

• 1. Product counterfeiting: in recent years, all well-known white wine and red wine manufacturers have been troubled by fake and shoddy products, with an annual loss of tens of millions. The anti-counterfeiting technology used is old and can not solve the fundamental problem from the source.
• 2. Consumers’ demand for commodity information: consumers need to know the quality of wine, whether it is counterfeit, and whether the origin, manufacturer, production date, variety and grade are consistent with practice, as well as the raw material composition, growth environment, production technology and cultural connotation of wine.
• 3. The demand of production enterprises for anti-counterfeiting information: it is necessary to be highly reliable and difficult to forge, so as to ensure the product safety in the logistics process.
• 4. The demand of circulation enterprises for product information: it is easy to use, simple to operate, anti-counterfeiting and product quality and safety information can be queried quickly, and the invested facilities and expenses can be borne by the enterprise.
• 5. Information requirements of government regulatory authorities: alcohol circulation supervision, establishment of product resume management system, product inspection and identification information, etc. in combination with management system.

Project feasibility analysis

Changli wine company, which has a market foundation and strong strength and urgently needs such technology for product improvement, is selected as the pilot to establish a standardized base for comprehensive demonstration of alcohol anti-counterfeiting based on RFID technology, implement the alcohol anti-counterfeiting demonstration project based on RFID technology from the whole production process of wine, and carry out the pilot of comprehensive application of alcohol anti-counterfeiting, After the project operation is mature, it will be gradually extended to other liquor enterprises.
At present, the alcohol anti-counterfeiting system is still in the introduction period in the domestic market, which needs extensive publicity and government support. By studying the application of RFID in the anti-counterfeiting of alcohol, the paper proposes a low-cost and rational RFID technology solution, which achieves the promotion of RFID technology in the liquor industry, and forms the industry application standard, and promotes the development of RFID technology industrialization in China. It also promotes the anti counterfeiting of alcohol, and promotes the healthy development of the traditional famous Wine industry in the “11th Five-Year”. It is beneficial to the development of liquor industry to the direction of wine.
In terms of technology, the traditional alcohol anti-counterfeiting and traceability technology has many defects, such as the amount of recorded information is too small to completely record all the information involved, the information is read-only, does not support writing, the reading range is small, easy to damage, and can not adapt to the humid environment. RFID is based on radio frequency technology, which can complete the reading and data integration of label content, record a large number of commodity logistics information, and the readable and writable recording method can effectively track products and find existing problems in time. In addition, RFID tag has the advantages of long service life, high security and low environmental requirements. It has the properties of waterproof, antimagnetic and high temperature resistance that bar code does not have. In recent years, RFID technology has developed rapidly. RFID technology has been used in many industries in China, such as railway, bus, postal service, logistics, tobacco, medicine, public security and so on. Because its technology brings great convenience to people, and with the decline of price and the improvement of technology, RFID technology is rapidly penetrating into all aspects of daily life and work. The popularity of RFID provides a basis for the research of alcohol anti-counterfeiting system based on RFID technology. By studying the technical application of RFID in alcohol anti-counterfeiting system, it helps to explore the key technical standards and specifications in alcohol anti-counterfeiting standards, accelerate innovation and promote the development of RFID industry.
In terms of enterprises, the alcohol anti-counterfeiting traceability system based on RFID technology can help enterprises realize standardized anti-counterfeiting specifications and anti-counterfeiting operation processes, make use of the advantages of RFID technology to realize automatic data collection, improve work efficiency, help enterprises improve supervision and production capacity and expand brand quality advantages. China is a large producer of wine products, and there are many wine enterprises. The anti-counterfeiting and Traceability Technology Based on RFID has broad market prospects.
In terms of consumers, consumers have higher and higher requirements for the quality and hygiene of alcohol. RFID wine traceability and anti-counterfeiting can provide consumers with a series of wine information, ensure the safety of wine products, and consumers’ right to know and choose wine, so that consumers can buy more at ease.

Overall scheme

Programme overview

In today’s increasingly fierce competition, product quality has been related to the life and death of enterprises, which can not be ignored by every enterprise. Enterprises must speed up technological innovation, adopt advanced technology, strengthen product quality supervision, enhance market competitiveness at home and abroad, reduce investment and continuously improve economic benefits. Quality management is a very realistic demand for enterprises. Quality tracking plays an important role in the process of realizing quality.
The system covers the circulation links from production to warehousing to market query, and has high integrity and flexibility. When combined with the logistics system, it will have powerful anti-counterfeiting, anti channeling and all-round tracking and traceability functions. The system adopts automation technology, automatic identification technology and information encryption technology to give each product a unique identity tag. Through product code assignment and supervision of circulation and sales information in the production process, the logistics and information flow of each wine product are supervised, managed and controlled.
The scheme takes RFID technology as the data management means to automatically identify the operation process of enterprise production and distribution and realize information management, so as to ensure the correctness and accuracy of various object management in the business process. Information construction is mainly aimed at anti-counterfeiting, traceability management, warehouse management, distribution management and flow traceability.
In the field of commodity anti-counterfeiting, anti-counterfeiting technology is an important technology to protect the interests of consumers and enterprises. However, most of the anti-counterfeiting technologies used in anti-counterfeiting products on the market are still paper materials. These materials and technologies are easy to be copied and replaced, can not play their due role, and the content of RFID chip can not be copied.
In the production phase, RFID tags are initialized in advance and associated with corresponding production tasks. During production, RFID tags are sewn in red wine to lay a data foundation for future business processes. According to the needs of the enterprise, the production link shall also manage the procurement, processing, production processes and formulas of round face.
In addition to the basic warehousing and inventory management, warehouse management should also clarify the location of the goods area, and make corresponding analysis and management on the product sales cycle, inventory cost, stock age cycle, inventory attribute, and business efficiency in the warehouse.
In the distribution process, customized lines are used to collect the in / out data of large warehouses, and stores use wireless terminals to receive and deliver goods. So as to realize the data sharing from the head office to branches, agents and franchise stores.
When the enterprise’s management platform is built successfully, it can issue management basis for quality traceability from production to sales terminal, anti-counterfeiting and anti string, channel optimization and integration, etc.

Overall technical scheme

As shown in the figure above, the system architecture is divided into five parts: access layer; Data layer; Service layer; Application layer; Presentation layer.

• (1) Access layer: the main function is to collect relevant RF signal data through readers, sensors, wireless networks and other devices and send these data layers for the next operation.
• (2) Data layer: including unit information, product data, container information, event information, etc., and send these information to the service layer for decoding and conversion.
• (3) Service layer: including registration code analysis, RFID information service, RFID discovery service, exception handling service, etc. its function is to convert RF data into digital data through specific code analysis and store it in the central server for subsequent calls; In addition, through data interaction, the operation request of RFID equipment can be managed and the problems can be handled.
• (4) Application layer: including procurement management, production management, logistics management, quality management, tracking and tracing and other application systems. These management systems are connected to the central database of the service layer and call the data in the database to understand the fact stored information for production, logistics, warehousing and other management.
• (5) Presentation layer: it is the website entrance of enterprise websites and relevant departments. The existing enterprise ERP or information systems can be integrated through interfaces in the application layer. So that each regulatory department can effectively manage and carry out inspection.

The purpose of this overall technical scheme is to solve the problem of anti-counterfeiting technology imitation encountered in the application of alcohol anti-counterfeiting through the characteristics of RFID electronic tag, completely solve the problem of reusing the anti-counterfeiting code of anti-counterfeiting tag, and solve the problem of automatic writing, readability and adaptability of electronic tag in the packaging environment of wine bottle by preventing the sealing technology of recycled electronic tag, Solve the problem of whole process tracking and traceability of alcohol products. In case of product problems, you can quickly find the problem link.

Process design ideas

The system runs on a server platform, and its function is mainly composed of five modules: single piece alcohol anti-counterfeiting management module; Alcohol tracking management module; Automatic production management module; Liquor warehouse management module; Liquor logistics management module.
The traceability system includes the following links:

• (1) Raw material storage: raw material warehouse RFID classification management, first in first out, raw material grade zoning.
• (2) Production management link: the production line gives RFID tags to each bottle of wine and counts pieces at the production station.
• (3) Finished product center warehouse management: the finished wine bottles automatically upload the warehousing information through RFID; And realize the rapid inventory of inventory wine RFID handset
• (4) Remote warehouse management: the remote warehouse can receive the goods through RFID handheld PDA to confirm whether the goods have been completely replaced and where to ship them.
• (5) Dealer management: dealers can check the delivery and transportation information of the goods through RFID handheld PDA.
• (6) End user management: the end customer can find all the information about the raw material production process, warehousing, logistics and dealers of each bottle of wine through the RFID terminal query machine, which plays a role in tracing the whole process.

Application scheme

(1) Design of anti-counterfeiting bottle cap: the embedded RFID electronic tag of the bottle cap is connected with the thermoplastic film seal of the bottle cap. When the thermoplastic film seal is torn off, the mechanical structure will destroy the RFID chip, so as to achieve the effect of damage when the cap is opened and can not be recovered.
(2) Electronic label data information
EPC coding structure standards include: epc-64, epc-96 and epc-256. Considering that the shipment volume of alcohol products is medium, 64b is selected for epcid coding. The main data information of the existing barcode is commodity identity, and others include manufacturer, place of origin, specification, production date, etc. The information stored in the EPC tag is much larger than the barcode, but the data information affects the reading speed of the tag. RFID anti-counterfeiting is the retrieval operation of the database according to the epcid code. The key to the data format of the RF tag is the retrieval code DSC (data searched code) of the database. In view of the above considerations, the EPC label data information of alcohol is designed as APC + PTC + ATC + uid, and 16b data is allocated to each block, which can also be allocated as needed. Among them, APC is the manufacturer code, PTC is the product type code, ATC is the origin and production date, and uid is the unique serial identification code of a single product.
Main technical indicators:

• Operating frequency: 925mhz
• Applicable temperature: – 40 ° to 150 °
• Communication rate: ≥ 260kbps
• Storage capacity: ≥ 512kbits
• Kang liquid environment

(3) Anti counterfeiting recognizer
Anti counterfeiting recognizer is a terminal device to detect the authenticity of products. It can display the authenticity information required by consumers through video. It is mainly distributed in major liquor sales places, supermarkets, streets and so on, which can be easily found by consumers.
(4) Hardware architecture of anti-counterfeiting recognizer:
The reader / writer is used to read the alcohol EPC label information and transmit it to the processing platform.
Industrial computer (IC) realizes data processing, transmission, query and display.
Middleware to convert the connection between different standard readers and anti-counterfeiting recognizers.
(5) Software architecture of anti-counterfeiting recognizer:
Reader / writer control module: send reader / writer control instructions to realize data reading and transmission of RF tag.
Construction of user operation platform: it provides a perfect and intuitive interface, which is simple to operate and can quickly query wine information.
Product database: manage the information of alcohol products, check, update and delete.
Data transmission: responsible for data exchange with the supervision center.
(6) Main technical indicators:

• Operating frequency: 925mhz
• Communication protocol: iso180006c
• Output power: + 20dbm – + 30dBm
• Modulation mode: 100% ASK modulation
• Maximum reading distance: 3M
• Maximum write distance: 0.5m
• Multi tag reading rate: ≥ 300 tags per second
• Operating temperature: – 20 ° to 60 °
• Life cycle process tracking design of alcohol products

1) Paste RF electronic tag: place RFID anti-counterfeiting tag at the corresponding position of the product through automatic method.
2) A fixed reading and writing device is installed on the production line to write data into the label and automatically record the information. A reading and writing device is placed at the end of the packaging production line. When the electronic label passes through the reading and writing area, the reader will automatically read out the label ID number and write the EPC code of the wine. At the same time, other information such as product offline time will be written in the user data area; At the same time, the reader and writer can set different access passwords for each tag according to a certain algorithm to prevent someone from trying to modify the data inside the tag. In addition, the server records the label information and establishes a file for each bottle of wine for query. After completing the data writing, put the wine into the packing box for warehousing.
3) Warehouse management: use EPC’s electronic label on the bottleneck of each bottle of wine to record the placement position, product category, date and other data; Through the label on the wine bottle, you can grasp the status of goods, including whether the temperature is suitable and the quality of wine at any time according to the unique code of each product, so as to facilitate warehouse management and immediately understand the items that need to be replenished, which is convenient for shortage management. In addition, in the case of return and exchange, the data can be modified as long as it is poured into the system.
4) Distribution logistics management: read the label data on the packing box through RFID, count the fast color goods, understand the types of goods and further enter the data, such as distribution location, distribution time and quantity of wine, etc.
5) Dealers and retailers are equipped with handheld machines to check the authenticity of wine: when consumers buy wine products, retail commercial handheld machines check the authenticity of wine on the spot. If the data can be read smoothly, it indicates that the bottle of wine is real wine. If the data in the label cannot be read, consumers can refuse to buy. In this way, the generation of fake wine can be eliminated from the source. It is impossible to reuse the electronic label, which can rule out the possibility that criminals remove the electronic label and use it again to pretend to be real wine after recycling the old wine box; In addition, the cost of counterfeiting RFID system by fake wine manufacturers is too high to be realized.

Conclusion

The liquor traceability system based on RFID technology fundamentally eliminates the generation of fake liquor, and protects the interests of consumers and liquor enterprises by means of integrated monitoring and recording information from raw materials, assembly, warehouse inventory, shipment and retailers. This paper introduces the EPC label design standard for alcohol, designs the label data format, puts forward the concept of anti-counterfeiting recognizer, and constructs the circulation process framework of alcohol products with EPC label. The theoretical data have been used, verified and demonstrated in xixiawang wine in Ningxia and yueqiannian wine in Hebei. In order to save the losses caused by the large-scale counterfeiting of Changli wine the year before last, increase the public trust, and meet the transformation of local economic and industrial structure in the new 12th Five Year Plan. It is imperative to implement RFID technology, especially the Internet of things technology, to trace the whole process quality and safety of the supply chain of grape planting source, production filling, warehousing, logistics, dealers and consumers, strengthen management, and create a public service platform with effective government supervision and consumers’ trust. Finally, with the progress of industrial technology and product promotion, RFID technology will solve the main existing problems of liquor from the source, and RFID liquor anti-counterfeiting and traceability technology has unlimited prospects.

Source: China RFID Tags Manufacturer – Actility Technologies Company Limited (www.tractility.com) Actility provides powerful security solutions for retail store management to prevent asset and property losses, improve transaction security, and provide intelligent analysis. We produce AM/EM/RFID systems, EAS tags, EAS soft labels, EAS safer, lanyards, detachers and all kinds EAS accessories products. Infrared people counter and camera people counter is available. If you want to have more information about the article or you want to share your opinion with us, contact us at [email protected]

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