Shedding light on effectively tracking and tracing heritage arts assets

Opera for many people is the greatest of art forms: singing, orchestral music, drama, acting, dance and visual arts are brought together in one complete spectacle. The theatrical scenery, with its stunning backdrops, costumes and props, breathes authenticity into each performance contributing to the ultimate audience experience. Stage assets are therefore very valuable heritage items and great care is required to identify, store and preserve them.

Teatro Regio di Parma

Italy’s Teatro Regio di Parma (Parma Opera House) has over the last 30 years realised sets and costumes for over 40 opera productions designed by some of the world’s most important set and costume designers such as Dante Ferretti, Robert Wilson and Pier Luigi Samaritani. The opera house is one of only a few that produces and rents out productions and related elements to other opera houses worldwide allowing global audiences to experience the wonder of their magnificent sets and costumes.

Tracking and tracing theatre items in real time

The opera house was struggling to track and trace items efficiently in real time and needed a system to streamline and improve their organisational and executive processes involved in managing the volume of stage items. They turned to Murata ID Solutions to develop an RFID tracking system for storing and managing assets, providing reassurance of their location whether that was in the opera house, in a warehouse or in use abroad at another international opera house.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekLccXQZUOY

The suitability of RFID technology for track and trace

The solution from Murata ID Solutions is built around RFID technology and gives a fast, accurate overview of sets and costumes whilst tracking and tracing them in real time. The process involves tagging items with RFID labels, logging them with handheld RFID readers managed through the cloud-based id-Bridge™ Middleware, and finally turning the data into actionable information thanks to the id-Bridge™ Dashboard. Murata ID Solutions developed the system along with the University of Parma which brought students into the project to help roll it out.

RFID technology is ideal for the solution as, unlike barcodes, every RFID tag is distinguished by a unique identification number and can be located inside items and boxes as it doesn’t need to be visible for scanning. As the props are made of different materials like wood, silk, cotton, iron, and paper etc, different kinds of tags and different ways to affix the tags to the items were identified. Some tags needed to be resistant to washing, others had to work with metal.

Creating and managing a digital inventory

Thanks to the deployment of the RFID solution, the theatre was able to create a digital inventory-management system. A master data set was created and every single item in a production was listed and linked with tag IDs. Handheld readers automatically identify all items as they are stocked or moved, enabling fast, accurate and real-time tracking of all elements during inventory and inbound/outbound processes. In case of missing objects, the RFID “tag finder” mode can help individualise the missing item’s exact location by emitting a sound and giving visual feedback on the reader display, thus guiding the operator to its exact location. The system can be used internationally as it uses GS1 standards which are compatible in any environment.

This RFID track and trace project is one of the first of its kind to be rolled out at a theatre company and has greatly improved inbound/outbound logistics processes. By using a digital innovation to streamline the organisational and executive processes of inventory management, Teatro Regio di Parma is now able to better protect every asset and safeguard these when the company co-produces, rents or sells commissioned sets.

To find out more about Murata ID Solutions RFID tracking, click here