RFID Lab stems from multi-year research activities performed at the Department of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Parma. The lab focuses on exploring the applications of RFID technology and the EPC system to business processes.

Founded in 2006, RFID Lab was the first Italian laboratory which tested RFID UHF Class1 Gen2 applications. Research activities, first focused on the food and fast-moving consumer goods fields, encompass several market segments, including, among others, paper, textiles, pharmaceuticals, health care and public administrations. All the companies that experiencing significant issues in product flows “visibility” and “traceability” along the supply chain, involving inefficiency and waste, may substantially benefit from RFID technology implementation and research activities performed at the RFID Lab.

The RFID Lab technological partnership encompasses more than twenty companies, market leaders in their fields. The technology partners provide the hardware and software required for testing and experiments, and receive feedback on performance, compatibility and ease of integration of hardware and software solutions with business processes. A panel of leading user companies, mainly from the food and fast-moving consumer goods fields, define the research activities of the RFID Lab, and benefit from the research results. The laboratory aims to become a national and international benchmark for:

1. Research activities encompass different topics of RFID applications to business processes, with an emphasis on Business Process Reengineering, feasibility study, hardware and software technologies. The focus is on RFID application in the food, retail, logistics, courier express and parcel, cold chain and pharmaceutical supply chains.
2. Training: extensive and customisable training programmes are offered to students as well as companies interested in exploiting RFID potential. RFID Lab will offer training services to students enrolled in undergraduate and post-graduate programmes, to be held at the Campus training facilities. The courses aimed at staff from companies, groups or members of a trade association and typically comprise between 6 and 24 attendees. The advantage of training at the RFID Lab is that it offers a mix of practical hands-on experiments, test work and demonstrations of RFID in action to compliment traditional classroom learning.
3. Advise services: RFID Lab helps companies carry out the following activities: (i) Define specific technical requirements; (ii) determine the best technology solution; (iii) carry out pilots or trials; (iv) implement a solution, including development and integration.

The RFID Lab offers testing facilities to perform tagged unit performance testing in a variety of supply chain conditions. Performance testing conducts appraisal of tag readability on specific cases or pallets of goods and experiments with tag placement on products for consistency of readings in pilot experiment.

Contact person: Giovanni Romagnoli - giovanni.romagnoli@unipr.it