An RFID system consists of two basic components: the tags (also called transponders), and readers, which are comprised of antennas and transceivers to identify the tags. The tags can either be active—a more expensive, battery-operated application that is always operational—or passive, a lower-cost tag that is operational only when a reader requests a response from a tag. Most organizations use active tags for large pallets or items, and passive tags for the boxes or even individual items in a container or on a pallet.

RFID promises a host of benefits for DOD, including reliable delivery of the right items to the right location at the right time; better asset management across the supply chain; more effective deployment of personnel, who no longer must spend time manually tracking assets; and good, old-fashioned inventory savings because of more efficient inventory use.

“If I have a C-17 aircraft that costs $170 million sitting on the ground because it’s waiting for a part, that isn’t the most cost-effective utilization of that asset,” says Alan Estevez, assistant deputy undersecretary of Defense for supply chain integration in the Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness. “Knowing where my materiel is and being able to flow that materiel efficiently means I can have that part and have the [aircraft] operating that much more quickly.”

RFID technology is so important to DOD that it merited a quarter-page mention in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review.

Steady Gains
Defense began deploying active RFID technology nearly two decades ago, mainly to track larger shipping containers. But lately, RFID has begun to gain steam through myriad projects across the department, from test cases to full rollouts.

In Iraq, the Marine Corps uses active RFID to track inbound materiel to its main logistics hub and then to warfighters in the field. This capability gives the Marines more confidence in the system, Estevez says, and drastically reduces the cost of supporting the Corps’ inventory in Iraq.

“It has decreased the amount of inventory on the ground and, at the same time, decreased the number of orders against that inventory because people aren’t ordering two or three times what they need because they don’t trust the system to get them what they need,” he says.

Elsewhere in DOD, organizations use active tags for some quite innovative applications, notes David Stephens, general manager for the U.S. public sector at Savi Technology Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., which supplies active tags to the military. For example, active RFID tags have sufficient solid-state memory to environmentally monitor medical supplies and food and can detect whether a shipment has exceeded temperature or humidity limits. Other pilots involve tracking assets for shock and vibration, Stephens says.

Now, DOD’s attention has extended to passive RFID. By affixing RFID tags to each item within the supply chain, DOD expects to reap additional logistical efficiencies. The goal, Estevez says, is to develop a comprehensive system of passive and active RFID that shrinks cost and turnaround cycles across the supply chain.

To continue the implementation of passive RFID, Defense issued a series of mandates and requirements over the past few years. In 2004, it issued a policy that, in part, required suppliers to affix passive RFID tags to specified cases, pallets and individual items at a handful of Defense distribution centers. By 2007, the requirement expands to all items and materials delivered to Defense distribution sites at 18 continental U.S. sites and eight overseas sites.

Bill Hartwell, vice president of the federal government systems division at Symbol Technologies Inc. of Holtsville, N.Y., says passive and active RFID work best in tandem.

“Up until now, it’s been mostly passive or active,” Hartwell says. “Say a big container is sent to a theater in Iraq with an active tag on it containing a manifest of the container’s items. Today, as soon as you open that container, none of those items have any tags on them, so you start to lose information quickly, and the validity of the manifest on that active tag isn’t as useful because items can be taken out and you don’t know that they have been removed. Passive tags mandated at the case and pallet level will go a long way toward solving that problem.”

Defense, other agencies and the retail industry are turning to passive RFID because of the ever-declining price of the technology, says Andy Dornan, an analyst with the 451 Group in San Francisco.

“It’s getting a lot cheaper, so instead of spending $5, maybe you’re spending 5 cents on a passive RFID tag,” he says. “That’s why DOD is able to do item-level tagging, and why other agencies are able to consider implementing the technology.”

Many Defense logistics organizations have some sort of passive RFID application under way. The Defense Distribution Depot in Norfolk, Va., began accepting material with both passive and active RFID tags affixed three years ago. One program that involves many Defense agencies and the University of Alaska will stand up an entire supply chain for inbound materials using passive RFID technology. The system covers air, land and sea shipments and includes the Defense Distribution Center in San Joaquin, Calif.; Travis Air Force Base, Calif.; the Tacoma, Wash., and Anchorage, Alaska, ports; Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson, Alaska.

The Navy also has been pushing RFID. Its facility in Bangor, Wash., where Trident submarines are retrofitted with nuclear devices, currently handles automatic receipt of goods using passive RFID. The Navy plans to expand the application within the next year down to the requisition level, letting the service stow material based on the RFID data.

Civilian Uses
Beyond DOD, the Homeland Security Department has finished a yearlong pilot for its U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program. US VISIT issued more than 200,000 I-94 forms, affixed with RFID tags, to automate the arrival and departure records of foreign travelers crossing U.S. borders through seaports, airports or land entry points. At each of three test sites, foreign visitors held up the I-94s while passing through border checkpoints or affixed them to their vehicles’ dashboards if driving through checkpoints.

The goal of the pilot initiative, says US VISIT spokeswoman Kimberly Weissman, is to speed throughput while increasing security. “RFID gives the border officer more information, so that when someone comes to a port of entry, the officer would automatically have the information pre-positioned on the screen and can ask questions,” she says. “The more information we have, the better and faster admissibility decisions the officer can make, which keeps borders moving freely.”

Cheap as passive tags are becoming, RFID technology entails significant lifecycle expenditures to acquire the technology and retrofit existing materials-handling systems to accommodate it. Defense estimates rolling out RFID across the department at $500 million, much of which has yet to be appropriated.

Estevez says efficiency savings and responsiveness to warfighters abroad will make the effort and cost worthwhile for DOD.

To get the basics about tags and tag protocols, go to www.defensesystems.com and enter 126 in the Quickfind search box.

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