DOD RFID efforts converge

 In the four years since the publication of a Defense Department policy mandating that suppliers begin applying passive radio-frequency identification tags to their shipments, the military has ratcheted up the requirements and broadened the installation of supporting infrastructure at Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) depots, Transportation Command facilities and the individual military services.

Although the mandate has been tightened a little each year to be more mandatory, the results are still uneven.

A DOD inspector general’s report released in September found that about 10 percent of new supply contracts still slip through without including the RFID requirement, and 43 percent of the suppliers who had the requirement in their contracts failed to apply the tags to their shipments.

Suppliers are also supposed to transmit an advance shipping notice (ASN), an electronic shipping document sent in advance of the shipment, making it possible to automatically match the identification codes on the RFID tags with that record and simplify inventory tracking. However, 35 percent of the suppliers also failed to comply with the ASN requirement, according to the IG's review.

However, the use of passive RFID tags through the military is proceeding on multiple tracks. The  Transportation Command, not DLA, is leading the push for RFID technology as part of a broader automated identification technology (AIT) strategy. David Dias, chief of the command's Asset Visibility Division, explained the measured approach to phasing in passive RFID. “We’re trying to crawl, walk and then run," he said.

DLA is systematically expanding its implementation by installing equipment to read passive RFID tags at the freight delivery doors of four DLA supply depots in the continental United States and two overseas, a DLA spokesperson said in a written response to queries from Defense Systems.

DLA said it is taking steps to promote compliance, including using automated procurement systems to automatically include the RFID requirement in new contracts and providing increased education for contracting officers. The agency is also beginning to levy penalties on suppliers that fail to comply. Where the IG found deficiencies, the responsible officers and managers have been alerted to take corrective action.

The IG's report gives DLA credit for making progress, but adds that “if RFID is not fully implemented across DOD as intended, DLA will have spent $12.2 million on an automated process that must be supplemented by manual input, surveillance and corrective measures." The report concludes that DLA needs to get more serious about auditing and enforcing compliance with the RFID mandate.

Vast supply chain
The military has more experience with active RFID – the more mature version of the technology that uses battery-powered radio identification units, which are widely deployed for tracking marine shipping containers and large, high-value assets. Passive RFID tags are different in that they draw their power from exposure to a radio beam and echo back an identification code. The price of passive tags has dropped to pennies per tag because of advances in technology and economies of scale.

The tag is a radio-activated printed circuit that can be programmed with a specific ID code by an RFID printer that simultaneously prints a bar code and a readable label on the adhesive wrapping for the tag. Although it’s still more expensive to apply an RFID tag than a bar code, the tags have the advantage of being able to be read from a distance and without a clear line of sight. This makes it possible to read hundreds of tags on hundreds of boxes of supplies at once, rather than scanning bar codes on those boxes one at a time. That should improve the speed and accuracy of tracking goods moving through the supply chain.

“RFID is nothing special as far as the basic technology goes," said Patrick Sweeney, president and chief executive officer of Odin Technologies, which consults with the military on RFID implementations. “It’s not a breakthrough tool like a bunker buster bomb – more of a critical enabler, like radar on a plane, meaning it can dramatically change the way you do things."

Sweeney said DOD could demonstrate results with passive RFID by identifying a few specific business processes that it can automate with the technology, such as shipping goods from a supplier to a depot's dock door and confirming the delivery of those supplies in the field. Although it’s important to achieve broad compliance with supplies coming into the system, a focused approach will be important to reaping value from the technology. DOD's supply chain is too vast for it to be practical to implement the technology everywhere at once, he said.

Although some of the first implementations had problems with low read rates, meaning that some RFID tag data would not register properly when a shipment was scanned, Dias said the latest tags that comply with the Generation 2 Electronic Product Code standards are showing much higher accuracy. “You can run a palette through a passive RFID portal and pretty much read everything on the skid," he said.

Dias said there's a reason the passive RFID-enabled supply chain doesn’t run to war zone locations in Iraq or Afghanistan. "We want to make sure we get it right first," he said. “We don’t want to be out on the pointy end of the spear."

Funding challenges
The money to extend the technology deeper into the supply chain hasn’t been forthcoming. “One of the big challenges the mandate has always had is the fact that it's an unfunded mandate," said Greg O'Connell, government markets director at Zebra Technology, which makes equipment to read and write RFID tags.

DOD laid out the requirement for RFID tagging but largely left it to the services to find money to fully implement the supporting infrastructure – something that’s been difficult when such projects must compete for resources in wartime. “That’s why the military hasn’t had a chance to extend the infrastructure beyond the distribution centers to the warfighters. It’s only touching the very tip of the iceberg."

Michael Moore, a project manager at the Northrup Grumman AIT Center who has worked with the Air Force and Marine Corps on passive RFID systems, said global deployment means overcoming technical challenges on a location-by-location basis. One complication is frequency planning. For example, a Marine Corps project he is working on in Japan has to work around a conflict with local cell phone spectrum allocation. Also, adding an RFID reader portal to a receiving location could be complicated by the lack of the right power and network connectivity resources at the receiving dock, he said. “Before you put a system anywhere, you have to understand where you’re putting it."

Full implementation of passive RFID will therefore take time, just as full adoption of earlier technologies such as bar coding did, Moore said. “You can't just wave your hand and say, ‘Do this tomorrow.’ "

The concept of operations document that the Transportation Command compiled to show where RFID fits into the military AIT strategy puts it in the context of consolidation layers ranging from individual items to packages, cases of boxes packed for transport, cargo skids and shipping containers. Passive RFID is identified as the preferred method for identifying packages, cases, and skids, and even some high-value individual items, but with 2-D bar codes running a close second as a backup option.

Old-fashioned linear bar codes are also retained as an option for backward compatibility. Active RFID remains the preferred technology for tracking shipping containers and some other high-value cargo loads, along with the option of tags that can be tracked by satellite or cellular networks for particularly sensitive shipments.

“Our goal is to apply the right AIT to the right place in the supply chain," Dias said.

Dias said he couldn’t comment on issues related to DLA’s enforcement of the supplier mandate, but that compliance is important to the ultimate success of passive RFID programs. "You have to tag a sufficient amount of assets with passive RFID in order to get a return on investment," Dias said.