The contract for the software-based passive RFID solution was awarded on Sept. 11, 2012. The RFID system, deployed by RFID Global Solution and CodeSource, will provide real-time visual, audio, and e-mail/text alerts if IT assets containing sensitive information are removed from the data center.

AP File Photo

The NCC houses computer operations essential to the prompt and accurate payment of benefits to Americans.

SSA will primarily use the RFID system to automate inventory and audit cycles for rack-mounted IT assets. RFID Global Solution’s Visi-Trac web-based software application for IT asset tracking is the backbone of the end-to-end solution being installed at the NCC facility in Woodlawn.

The solution is expected to lead to much-needed labor savings for the SSA, which has reduced its operating hours twice in the last 14 months to save on labor costs. According to the Federal Times, all 1,233 SSA field offices will close 30 minutes earlier beginning in November.

According to published reports, the NCC stores 460 million records of earnings and benefits for 57 million Social Security beneficiaries.

With that in mind, HID Global, a provider of solutions for the delivery of secure identity, has provided its perspective on some of the key trends likely to impact government identity programs over the next five years.

The company says that the overarching drivers are the dramatic shift from traditional national identity documents such as social security cards and medical cards to eIDs, and the growing requirement to defend against mass counterfeiting and tampering attempts while assuring privacy, efficiency and ease of authentication.

“Among the most important factors that will shape the industry as it moves to near-universal eID adoption are the twin imperatives for providers and partners to provide effective defenses against large-scale forgery attempts and adopt a holistic approach to projects,” says Craig Sandness, vice president of sales with HID Global’s Government ID Solutions.

HID Global is experiencing accelerated demand for highly secure and layered, hybrid solutions such as the German National Identity card and the multi-tasking Carabinieri card used by Italy’s national police force.  These solutions perform multiple tasks including access control, proof of identity, healthcare and tax ID, and government fee payments.  Multi-functional credentials also leverage a combination of different technologies including contact or contactless chips, RFID antennae, biometrics and optically variable devices to deliver the requisite levels of functionality and security.

Click here to read HID Global’s entire statement on the national ID card industry.

Savings: ($2M-plus)

Submitted by Intermec

The U.S. Navy is using RFID in several ways, including monitoring the pack-up-kits, or PUKs, that are deployed each time a Navy aviation squadron is deployed. Each PUK contains 500-600 replacement parts worth more than $10 million. Using RFID has helped the Navy to gain better visibility into PUK replacement parts. By reducing inventory by just 10 to 15 items per PUK, the Navy has saved between $500,000 and $1 million.

“That’s the key money saver,” says Chet Zeller, project manager for Serco, systems integrator for the project. “If you get accurate control of a $10 million inventory, it can be reduced by 10 or 15 items, which shrinks the dollar value $500,000 to $1 million – a 5 or 10 percent reduction. The real value is enabling just-in-time replenishment and just-in-time inventory management.”

Aside from the savings from not purchasing duplicate products, the Navy reduced the time it takes to perform inventory by a staggering 98 percent.

The U.S. Navy Regional Supply Office in Norfolk, Va. provides logistical support for the aircraft squadrons stationed at Naval Air Station Norfolk. When a squadron is deployed, a PUK of several pallets, containing 5x5x5 foot cartons of supplies known as tri-walls, are sent along with it, traveling from the regional supply office command to the supply command assigned to the squadron.

Before the PUK leaves Norfolk, both commands must agree upon the contents. In the past, one person called out part numbers from a printed list while two others — each representing a command — checked off the items on their own inventory lists. Any discrepancies were noted and manually entered into the system after the inventory was complete.

Before RFID, the process took three people a total of 24 hours. At an average burdened wage of $28.83 per hour, the labor cost for performing one PUK inventory was nearly $700. Multiply that by the 64 PUKs inventoried at least four times a year at Norfolk alone, and the Navy had a very costly logistical nightmare — approaching $200,000 worth of unnecessary labor costs at one site alone.

In addition, once the PUK was in the field, simply locating one part out of the 500 in the kit could take hours. And there was little visibility into the replenishment supply chain, sometimes resulting in multiple orders of the same part.

To improve inventory management, the supply officers at NAS Norfolk looked to an RFID solution from Intermec Technologies, Serco, Phase IV Engineering, Boh Environmental and PSC Technology.

RFID was a natural fit for the Navy’s Automatic Identification Technology (AIT) initiative, and so the Navy ordered a pilot technological overhaul of the PUK inventory process. NAS Norfolk’s first evaluation of RFID integrated the technology into the E-2C PUKs assigned to a detachment at NAS Fallon, Nev. The evaluation yielded dramatic results.

“Each time we sent a PUK out on detachment, we’d have to do a turnover inventory from my command to the supply personnel attached to the squadron,” said Lt. John Wait, assistant supply officer at NAS Norfolk. “Both commands must count the same things together and agree on the contents. It’s extremely cumbersome. We’d each have a paper copy of the inventory and someone would call off each nine-digit number and we all check it off the list. With the manual system, it took about 24 man-hours to do one E2 PUK. With RFID, we now inventory that same PUK in less than 30 minutes.”

Once at work in the field, the Navy’s technology investment in RFID paid even further dividends.

“Under the old system, when a maintenance tech set out to find a part there was no telling its location – down to which tri-wall the part was in or even which pallet,” Wait said. “It was kind of like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“Imagine 500-600 parts in a warehouse on 12 or 15 pallets, or the parts are stored in tri-walls with approximately 50 parts in each, some the size of a carton of cigarettes,” says Zeller. “When a mechanic needs a specific bleed air valve, it may take several hours just to find that one part. With RFID, the mechanic enters the item he needs, scans with the reader and receives the location of the item. It’s that simple.”

The RFID system also paid off by greatly improving inventory accuracy. Previous manual systems allowed little if any visibility to the actual inventory on hand, and as parts were replenished there was significant room for error.

“As maintenance crews worked with the parts, either taking new ones off the PUK or turning old ones in, they sometimes lost track of the part’s specific location. We call those lost parts ‘carcasses’,” Zeller said. “They’re not actually lost, however, they aren’t visible within the supply system. And so the system would react to replenish in error.”

With RFID, inventory is kept in real-time and replenishment orders are transmitted back to NAS Norfolk as parts are checked out. Supply officers also have complete visibility of the replacement parts in-transit, eliminating duplicate orders.

“This project proved that, not only can we find the part quickly by using RFID, our database knows where the part is already,” Wait said. “It greatly improved our organizational abilities and turnover time of a pack up kit.”

Zeller lauds the trial both for its immediate success and the benefits the Navy will reap when RFID technology is more widely implemented.

“There are more than ten identical sites within the Navy that operate in the same way as Norfolk,” says Zeller. “Serco’s business case analysis, provided in our post-implementation report to the Navy, concluded that the total annual savings the Navy reaped by implementing this one business process improvement across all ten sites would be in excess of $2.2 million per year. And this is for just one small section of the Navy supply chain.”

Savings: ($10M-plus)

Submitted by ODIN RFID

Last March, NATO issued a contract to ODIN RFID to affix RFID tags to its fleet of SeaSparrow missiles, with a goal of reducing maintenance on the units. In January, the first RFID-enabled missile left the manufacturing facility en route to an undisclosed port destination.

Proper maintenance tracking and handling can have a positive impact on missile useful life and warfighter safety by preventing pre-mature failures in the missile systems, for example, which renders them inoperable. For every one percent decrease in missile failures resulting from an RFID solution, the government estimates a savings of up to $10 million.

In a day and age when the government is slashing budget spending, RFID can offer a significant savings. Placing RFID tags on missiles used by the U.S. Navy and by NATO, for example, could save up to $300 million in unneeded maintenance costs a year.

The RFID system will provide NATO with comprehensive tracking of humidity, vibration, temperature, shock and other vital information for the unit, potentially saving NATO millions when it comes to maintenance procedures. According to sources, each NATO missile undergoes an annual maintenance program, at a cost of approximately $100,000 per missile. More often than not, the missiles are in perfect working order and end up getting the expensive tune ups much earlier than actually required.

By deploying RFID to measure environmental factors like temperature, vibration, humidity and the amount of salt air the units are exposed to, NATO can push those inspections out to 24 to 30 month intervals, resulting in huge cost savings while at the same time ensuring those missiles that have had a tough life get serviced when they need it. This could prevent premature failures that are a danger to the warfighter.

“What we are doing for the Navy is developing a system that gives timely feedback on moisture, humidity, temperature, and the number of times g-forces exceed 1.5 Gs,” says Patrick Sweeney, CEO and founder of ODIN, which has transitioned from small weapons tracking to working on large defense projects like the missile program.

When any of the above readings reach a pre-determined threshold, the RFID tags and sensors trigger a signal indicating the unit needs maintenance. The system relies on a combination of active tags and sensors, as well as passive RFID technology.

According to the paperwork the Navy submitted to Congress to gain funding for the project, each missile costs between $1 and $2.5 million to build. The Navy first began to look at RFID technology for this use case back in the 1990s. However, the technology wasn’t mature enough at the time and was too costly. The major development in this area was the vast performance improvement of on-metal tags.

The Blue Grass Army Depot, located near Richmond, Ky., safeguards a ready supply of conventional munitions and provides chemical defense equipment and special operations support to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Bechtel Parsons is turning to RFID to meet part of that safety requirement. The firm has awarded a purchase order to Holland 1916 to supply RFID tags for the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant (BGCAPP) project. The plant will be a state-of-the-art, full-scale pilot facility designed to safely and efficiently neutralize the Blue Grass chemical weapons stockpile. A contract was awarded to Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass in 2003 to design, build, construct, test, operate and ultimately close the facility.

Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass is the systems contractor for the pilot plant that is being built to safely and efficiently destroy 523 tons of munitions containing blister and nerve agents.

Bechtel Parsons is using Holland 1916’s UHF DataCinch embedded with the Xerafy Pico X II transponder to manage inspection records for nearly 2,000 individual ladders and fall protection equipment at the BGCAPP construction site.

“Bechtel Parsons was looking for a solution that was not only durable and easy to apply, but could be attached to many different styles of assets,” said Zack Barron of Holland 1916. “We are very pleased that we were able to provide a solution that addressed Bechtel Parson’s needs.”

“Our diverse revenue base enabled us to achieve strong growth despite an estimated $3.6 million decline in sales to the U.S. government sector, which continued to experience budget uncertainties and resulting project delays,” Ayman S. Ashour, chairman and CEO of Identive, said in a press release.

Stay tuned for this week’s issue of RFID 24-7 for the real story behind the U.S. government’s decrease in RFID spending. Not a subscriber? Click here!

Ten months after awarding a contract to ODIN to outfit NATO SeaSparrow missiles with RFID technology, the first RFID-enabled missile left the manufacturing facility this week en route to its port destination.

The RFID system will provide NATO with comprehensive tracking of humidity, vibration, temperature, shock and other vital information for the unit, potentially saving NATO millions when it comes to maintenance procedures. According to sources, each NATO missile undergoes an annual maintenance program, at a cost of approximately $100,000 per missile. More often than not, the missiles are in perfect working order and end up getting the expensive tune ups much earlier than actually required.

An RFID-enabled NATO missile leaves its manufacturing facility for an unnamed port.

By deploying RFID to measure environmental factors like temperature, vibration, humidity and the amount of salt air the units are exposed to, NATO can push those inspections out to 24 to 30 month intervals, resulting in huge cost savings while at the same time ensuring those missiles that have had a tough life get serviced when they need it. This could prevent premature failures that are a danger to the warfighter.

“What we are doing for the Navy is developing a system that gives timely feedback on moisture, humidity, temperature, and the number of times g-forces exceed 1.5 Gs,” says Patrick Sweeney, CEO and founder of ODIN, which has transitioned from small weapons tracking to working on large defense projects like the missile program.

When any of the above readings reach a pre-determined threshold, the RFID tags and sensors trigger a signal indicating the unit needs maintenance. The system relies on a combination of active tags and sensors, as well as passive RFID technology.

According to the paperwork the Navy submitted to Congress to gain funding for the project, each missile costs between $1 and $2.5 million to build. Proper maintenance tracking and handling can have a material impact on missile useful life and warfighter safety by preventing pre-mature failures in the missile systems, for example, which renders them inoperable.

For every one percent decrease in missile failures driven by RFID technology, the government estimates a savings of up to $10 million. The Navy first began to look at RFID technology for this use case back in the 1990s. However, the technology wasn’t mature enough at the time and was too costly. The major development in this area was the vast performance improvement of on-metal tags.

“We have been working with Radiant RFID for several years using their services to track evacuees during hurricane evacuations while also ensuring our emergency management equipment and related mobile devices are kept in a constant state of readiness,” said Texas DPS Chief Information Officer, Mark Doggett. “It made sense for us to significantly expand our existing relationship with Radiant RFID and apply their innovative technology to solve the challenge of tracking large numbers of devices and equipment across the State of Texas.”

Radiant RFID’s solution helps the DPS know where the asset is located or if it has been transferred to another department, not just it’s cost center or depreciated value. Radiant RFID’s online asset transfer functionality eliminates paper forms and manual entries previously required to transfer equipment and assets as people and their items moved from department to department.

The new online asset transfer system sends an email to the receiving department’s property custodian which then accepts or rejects an asset transfer request. Radiant RFID’s system also keeps a detailed history of where the asset has been and where the asset is currently located. Utilizing the latest in RFID technology from Motorola/Symbol®, Radiant’s Virtual Asset Tracker enables monitoring of all types of assets used by the DPS.

“Similar to many large corporations, the Texas DPS needs to know the physical location of their numerous assets – at any given point in time,” said Cynthia Rubio-Ratton, President & Co-founder of Radiant RFID. Through the use of GPS and RFID asset tracking technology, Radiant’s solution helps the DPS to know the location of all of their assets – even if the assets are transferred to a new location or department.”

The DLA, the supply chain arm of the DoD, has made this request before. However, the agency is adding teeth to its mandate by tagging all non-compliant passive RFID shipments with a negative rating on the supplier’s performance scorecard. The move is expected to jump-start the approximately 50 percent of DLA suppliers who have not fully complied with previous tagging requirements.

In another development, DLA is aggressively pursuing item level tagging for apparel goods like uniforms and boots. Some estimates say the DLA is tagging about 10 million apparel items annually. DLA has reduced the time it takes to get new uniforms to boot camp troops at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio from 165 minutes to 45 minutes.

As for the DLA’s Oct. 1 mandate, Carl Brown, CEO of Simply RFID, which provides software and services to help vendors become RFID compliant, says that the final DLA holdouts should start to convert quickly.

“It’s going to make [compliance] 100 percent with 60 days,” he says. “Anyone who wants to ship to the DLA will need to become compliant instantly. It’s important that suppliers maintain a 99 percent or above (DLA) rating because they don’t want to lose their ability to win bids. So this is a pretty simple way for DOA to get instant compliance.”

Under the system, suppliers who fail to tag cases and pallets of goods shipped to DLA will receive a negative mark on their past performance history, just as they do for late or cancelled shipments.

Separately, the inventory error rate at Lackland Air Force Base was reduced from 5.1 percent to .2 percent after item level RFID took hold for apparel goods. Prior to RFID, one of every 20 boxes arriving at the Lakeland facility contained incorrect items.

“The goal of DLA is to make sure each trainee gets proper equipment and is fully equipped with a proper fitting uniform,” says Jack Vandenberghe, a Senior Fellow with LMI, a non-profit government consulting firm that supports the DLA in conducting business case analysis. “So it’s important that trainees get the right quantity of items in the right size.”

The DLA’s item level initiative got underway in 2007 when it sought interested parties to become partners in the Customer Driven Uniform Manufacture program (CDUM). From one pilot supplier in 2008, the program has grown to include a dozen or more apparel suppliers who apply RFID tags at the source.

While the gains for the DLA have been substantial, apparel manufacturers have noted benefits as well. Specifically, they now get paid instantaneously once an RFID-tagged shipment hits the dock doors at the DLA depots. That’s allowing suppliers to increase cash flow by receiving payments 15 to 21 days earlier than usual. In addition, suppliers have uncovered big gains in operational efficiencies.

Jose Luis Ortega Jr., vice president at Excel Manufacturing, which supplies about 5,000 pieces of apparel to the DLA each week, says his company has eliminated redundancies such as double and triple checking orders to ensure that the right product is being shipped.

“RFID takes all the guess work out of it and allows us to free up the people on the floor for other more important tasks,” he says. RFID has also removed labor from the packaging process, which now is basically automated when it comes to counting items.

According to VDC Research, the trends behind this market growth include, but are not limited to:

• Scaling of existing projects in a diversity of markets and applications
• Decreased pilot-to-deployment time and an increased level of commitment
• A deeper understanding of the technology’s value propositions and limitations
• More attractive price/performance levels and simplified investment justification
• Deep integration and continued convergence with legacy systems
• A continued push for adoption throughout value chains

Although approximately 50 percent of all global transponder revenues are derived from two verticals — transportation and government (primary applications are supply chain, asset tracking, security/access control and ID) — the rapid evolution and scaling within the retail sector is expected to dramatically alter the vertical landscape.

Retail accounted for less than 10 percent of all tag revenues in 2010; however, by 2015, the retail sector is expected to represent nearly 30 percent of total global revenues. Click here to read RFID 24-’s previous coverage on RFID and retail.

Click here to read the full VDC executive summary.