AIT Applications Expand
Automatic identification technology (AIT) continues to increase in the tracking and managing of military assets, reducing cost, increasing accuracy, speeding up processes and increasing visibility.
AIT tags assets with a variety of devices, including linear barcodes, 2-D barcodes and both passive and active radio frequency identification (RFID). These tags carry unique identification (UID) and sometimes other information on the asset, which may be a part, a subsystem, or a case or pallet of items. Tags are detected by readers, and the information is then converted by software into a form that can be used by tracking and management systems.
Choices and challenges occur at each stage. Less expensive tags are used for smaller and less valuable assets, while more expensive devices are reserved for more valuable ones. Conversion software must filter out irrelevant data, which may be plentiful, especially when readers detect many RFID tags over a wide area or when assets are moving and may be detected more than once. Fortunately, experience improves this filtering process, and the number of software choices is increasing rapidly.
The AIT Center at Northrop Grumman has been working with asset tracking for more than 20 years, noted center manager Sam McClintock. “We started with barcodes and over time moved to passive and active RFID,” McClintock said.
Northrop develops and integrates AIT applications and even stores assets in its own warehouses, but does not manufacture tags or readers. Recent projects have included installing over 90 passive RFID portals for the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command for tracking pallets, passive RFID systems for both I and III Marine Expeditionary Forces, and another passive RFID pilot for the Army. Passive RFID tends to be used for items, boxes and sometime pallets, with active RFID applied to larger assets.
As RFID tags become more pervasive in the environment and can be read at up to 15 to 45 feet, AIT must discriminate between tags it is seeking and those it is not. McClintock said that using filters to do this discrimination is now a common business practice used by experienced AIT firms. “Duplicate events are also real common, and these must be purged, but there are common business practices to handle these.”
Moreover, data flow increases by an order of magnitude when tracking changes from barcodes to RFID. “This sometimes scares people,” McClintock acknowledged. But asset managers are getting used to it.
Software vendors are proliferating. “There used to be three; now there are 20, and they all can argue theirs is the best,” McClintock said. Another change is readers that can be powered over the Ethernet or even by wireless, reducing installation costs. And some manufacturers are starting to install tracking middleware on the readers themselves.
McClintock expects continuing expansion of AIT, partly as a result of a Defense Logistics Agency mandate. As new systems are deployed, there will be fewer and shorter gaps in tracking assets over long distances. “You might have had a 90-day gap between an asset leaving a logistic center and arriving in Kuwait. That could come down to 30 days. The supply chain will become more visible. The goal has always been to know where it is down to the last tactical mile.”
Passive RFID tags have declined in price, from 25 cents apiece to 10 cents. But McClintock noted that barcodes, read 5 million times a day, are still much more numerous than RFID tags, of which only 5 to 10 million are sold each year. Partly due to cost and the slow economy, many users are sticking with workable barcode systems rather than convert to RFID.
Savi Technology, a Lockheed Martin Company, manufactures active RFID tags, tag readers and software that can interpret active and passive RFID and 2-D barcodes. The software includes a layer, SmartChain, that converts tag readings into business events that can then be used by Savi’s or another firm’s asset management system.
“Asset management was traditionally used in commercial applications,” explained David Shannon, senior vice president of product management, marketing and strategy, “while shipment management was used by the military.” But the military is increasingly using asset management as well.
Among military projects, Savi helped an Army depot manage a variety of assets stored over 60 square miles by marrying active RFID with Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) data. RFID tags identify each asset and link it to GPS coordinates where the asset is originally stored. Vehicles can now do drive-by inventories of these assets and their exact locations.
Another project at an Army helicopter depot locates parts removed for repairs that need to be found quickly and returned to original aircraft. Savi uses an active RIFD system that quizzes parts, receiving responses such as ‘nearer’ or ‘farther away’ as the reader moves around the huge facility. “This real-time locating system does for indoors what GPS does for outdoors,” Shannon explained.
Sorting relevant from irrelevant data can be a major challenge. “For any kind of RFID, active or passive, the reader can excite all the tags in its range,” Shannon said. “If the reader asks several times, it will get duplicate readings, which must be weeded out.”
Savi’s SmartChain uses business rules and filters to do the sorting and weeding. Filters use data stored on SmartChain itself, data stored on tags and other processes to ensure only relevant data is passed to the asset management system. “For example, the depot may be looking for parts that are not currently attached to a vehicle, but the reader gets responses from all of them. The system has a list of ones that are attached, so it can discard those.”
Another technique is reducing the frequency of readings to reduce duplicates. SmartChain stores and analyzes tag readings before it passes them to asset management, so duplicate readings of moving assets at different locations are not used.
Savi’s 20-plus years of experience help it find rules and filters that minimize, even if they cannot absolutely eliminate, these data challenges. Savi advises clients on the best mix of AIT tools for each project. Shannon says active RFID is generally more suitable for major assets spread across large areas or co-located near water or lots of metal. Less expensive passive RIFD tags are suitable for low-end items stored in smaller areas or moving through fixed and simple paths.
InLogic has worked mostly for the Army and Air Force, tracking assets such as weapons, test ammunition, servers, laptops and pallets. “We have not worked for the Marines yet, but we have a couple of opportunities with them,” noted Scott Porter, InLogic president.
InLogic automates tracking of inventories, mostly small items kept indoors. Its system can use RFID or barcode technology. The company makes only software and partners with hardware firms like Motorola that make readers and tags. It also helps customers select the tag system suitable for each task. “Selecting the tag that will enable your equipment to be read is critical,” Porter emphasized.
Potential gains are substantial. Automatic inventory can be taken 10 to 15 times faster than a manual one. “That reduces manpower; you can take inventory monthly or quarterly rather than annually, so you have better visibility of assets.”
InLogic’s solution is based on customers telling the software what assets they have and what tags they carry, so other tags are ignored. “All the data is relevant,” Porter said.
3M’s track and trace solutions were recently used to install a Web-based system for tracking and managing personnel files using passive RFID tags at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
“Camp Pendleton has 40,000 personnel records spread over 100 square miles,” explained marketing specialist Carolyn Gonzales. “They had 72 employees spending 115,000 man-hours and $3 million per year handling these records.” At any given time, 10 percent of the records were unaccounted for, and this could cause delays when a Marine was scheduled to deploy.
The goal of track and trace is to cut handling costs in half, increase accuracy by 10 percent and ensure that 100 percent of records can be accounted for at all times. 3M had experience in similar projects at Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay in 2008 and with medical records at Fort Hood in 2003.
3M makes the tags, the handheld devices for reading tags, and the software that tracks and manages the items. The software reads only the tag data it is programmed to read—for example, UID numbers. There is thus no extraneous data in the system.
Since the Marine Corps does not want to discard the tags when individual Marines leave, tags are put on pieces of paper that can be removed from specific records and be reused up to 10,000 times.
Gonzales noted that once the tracking software is installed, it can track any additional items that are tagged with RFID. “You just set more tags.” 3M has just launched a new product, “a tracking system in a box that can handle virtually anything,” Gonzales said. It can work with barcodes as well as RFID.
Gonzales is proud of 3M’s quality and record of supporting its products. And, as a Six Sigma blackbelt, she worked with her counterpart at Pendleton to review and improve record-handling processes as the new system was implemented.
IDZ develops both hardware and software for asset tracking. For four years it has provided an asset tracking system for Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, to help control tool inventories.
Hector Gomez, vice president of marketing and business development explained that IDZ uses its own passive RFID tags and readers for the Dyess project. But IDZ’s tracking solution can also use active RFID for indoor systems, GPS data for outdoor systems and RTLS data. “We can use any identification technology the customer has installed, depending on what they have already invested in.” IDZ is piloting RFID with the Air Mobility Command at Travis Air Force Base and several other Air Force facilities.
The company designs its own passive tags and readers. Hardware is manufactured by partners, and then final assembly and testing is done by IDZ in San Antonio. It also designs and makes tracking software. Since proprietary software interprets the data, no irrelevant information is passed to IDZ’s tracking system. “This is real-time information,” Gomez emphasized.
IDZ is seeing more military and aerospace organizations seek to concentrate on their core business of flying and maintaining aircraft, while tightening control of equipment and tools as they move toward Lean programs. The company is seeking more work with the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines. It also sees opportunities with aerospace firms in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Lowry provides asset control systems to military customers under two contracts, AIT-IV and pRFID, both multi-year deals allowing branches of U.S. or NATO militaries to secure services.
“We are a full-system provider,” noted CEO Mike Lowry. The company offers one and 2-D barcodes and RFID tags, makes use of Motorola readers, which can be either handheld or portal, and supplies the tracking software. Its military customers increasingly use either 2-D barcodes or RFID tagging. Decoding of data is done on software embedded in the Motorola readers, so duplicates and irrelevant data are stripped out before they enter the tracking system. “That is pretty straightforward today,” Lowry said.
He sees big trends toward more use of automated asset tracking and a shift from tracking common part numbers to tracking assets by serial numbers unique to individual items. Accuracy is one big reason for automating the whole process. “In paper processes, three errors per 100 keystrokes are common, but you can get 99.8 percent accuracy using automatic data collection.” Using RFID rather than barcodes enables inventories to be taken faster, more accurately and more economically.
“The military wants asset visibility and they want better preventive maintenance,” Lowry said. “By tracking individual parts, you can schedule maintenance according to actual usage, rather than just by months, and know readiness.” Many military assets are also reconfigured for particular conditions of deployment, and individualized tracking captures these reconfigurations.
Major categories moving toward automated tracking include IT assets, valuable and omnipresent in the military today; medical equipment, highly mobile and often misplaced or stolen; and vehicles and aircraft, which require support and preventive maintenance according to usage. “The buzzword is product life cycle management, all the way to disposal,” Lowry explained. “And we are also seeing a lot more tracking of stored records and boxes of records, part of the transition from paper to digital records.” ♦
