U.S. General Services Administration uses RFID to track the location of military supplies
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The General Services Administration (GSA) is responsible for managing more than 11% of government procurement funds and US$24 billion worth of federal assets, including 8,600 government-owned or leased buildings and 213,000 vehicles. GSA supplies various government departments and agencies with office supplies and other materials needed to maintain operations. Such a large amount of material management means a huge logistics challenge. However, a set of real-time positioning system installed recently by GSA at the Western Distribution Center in French Camp, California effectively solved this problem.
This system uses passive UHF RFID tags based on the EPC Gen 2 standard to track the process of pallets, boxes and packages from the loading port to the back of the truck. The system not only records the delivery time of the goods, but also sends out an alarm if it detects that the container or package is loaded on the wrong truck, or the item falls from the conveyor belt, or there is a risk of misplacement.
Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) is responsible for the design, installation, testing and integration of this system. The company uses RF Controls’ RFID readers and GlobeRanger’s edgeware and middleware management readers, as well as iMotion software compiler readers and GSA’s existing HighJump Data flow between warehouse management systems. XIO Strategies provides consulting and training assistance.
The SAIC solution provides a 3D view of the location of each labeled box and item. Since this system has only been installed for 4 weeks, GSA is still evaluating what functions this system can achieve, but the organization’s plan is to extend it to the entire warehouse and label all items. Bryan, head of GSA’s general supply and service branch Tiplady explained.
GSA’s French Camp distribution center consists of three buildings, covering a total of 1 million square feet. The center receives, stores, and transports 5,000 items such as paper, office supplies, and tools for government agencies and the US Department of Defense. Before the center supplies are shipped to military bases in the United States and overseas, about 60% are usually sent to a place operated by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) of the Department of Defense.
When the French Camp distribution center prepares to deliver supplies, the items are placed in containers, which are then loaded on pallets, and then forklifts are used to transport them to trucks parked on dozens of loading docks. Some small materials are more difficult to track because their boxes are irregular in size and cannot be stacked together on the pallet. The smaller items are placed in shredded paper-lined envelopes.
The items in the large envelopes are not placed on pallets, but are sent along the conveyor to a loading and unloading port, where workers put the envelopes in a transparent, 50-gallon plastic bag, and then load them on the truck, irregularly The boxes are loaded directly onto the truck. GSA hopes to track irregular boxes and plastic bags without changing the existing process to improve the accuracy of each truck’s delivery. In addition, the Ministry of Defense requires that all pallets, individual containers or envelopes be labeled.
The system tracks the flow of labeled containers from the loading port to the rear of the truck, and a reader is suspended above the loading port
“One of the challenges we face is to integrate RFID into our existing system. Only 60% of the goods require RFID technology,” Tiplady said. GSA decided to install the SATC system in Building 330-a 600,000-square-foot warehouse (the largest of the three buildings)-Building 330 mainly stores materials for the Department of Defense.
According to Douglas Litten, SAIC’s RFID project manager, this system installs RFID readers at 9 loading and unloading ports (used for loading goods sent to the Ministry of Defense), including three large loading docks (for pallets and boxed items), Three smaller loading bays (for parcels) and three conveyor belt loading and unloading doors (carrying irregular items) mount the RFID readers above, Litten said.
If the cargo box is loaded onto the wrong truck or falls off the conveyor belt, the system will issue an alarm
When the system was initially installed, GSA only tagged 15% of the total inventory-these items were shipped to the bases where RFID was deployed by the Ministry of Defense. With this new system, when placing an order, the warehouse worker compares an electronic pick-up order to prepare the required material container. Then, GSA HighJump software receives the order and location data, compiles the information, and forwards it to the iMotion system, according to Michael Bigbee, GlobeRanger’s senior sales executive.
Each packing station has two printers-one prints labels with embedded RFID inlays and the other prints labels with non-RFID inlays. Based on the identity of the customer, the SAIC software determines whether the item will be shipped to the RFID location of the Department of Defense, and then sends the command to the correct printer. If the box is sent to the Ministry of Defense where there is an RFID facility, the UHF EPC Gen 2 RFID inlay of the tag is written with a unique ID code, and several barcodes and customer-related information are printed on the front of the tag. If RFID tags are not required, the printer will only print plain text tags.
When the container is loaded on the pallet, GSA workers use a barcode scanner to scan the label to ensure the correctness of the loaded goods. For RFID goods, they also paste RFID tags on the pallets, and the iMotion software corresponds the ID of the pallet to the ID code of the loaded goods. The forklift operator then transports the pallet to the correct loading door, where the RFID reader obtains the location of the tag. The SAIC software determines whether the correct pallet is loaded into the correct truck. If there is an error, the red light is on. In addition, iMotion software data is sent to GSA’s HighJump system in order to record the transportation information of labeled pallets, boxes, packages and envelopes.
SAIC installed RFID readers, covering a 4 feet * 4 feet area, where large envelopes were stored, waiting to be placed in a larger plastic bag. When goods enter the area through the conveyor belt, the SAIC software updates the information to indicate when the goods arrive in the area and when they are loaded onto the truck. Thanks to the use of RFID readers, the system can also determine whether there is an error-for example, if an item falls off a conveyor belt and falls on the floor. In this case, GlobeRanger’s iMotion software will notify the warehouse manager that the item is not loaded on the truck and where it is currently located. In this way, Bigbee claims that passive RFID tags with lower system cost can obtain RTLS data, and the price of active tags used in traditional real-time positioning systems is between US$20 and US$50.
If items are misplaced, workers also use Motorola MC9090-G RFID handhelds to read tags. For example, if workers find a missing product in the warehouse, they can simply read the label to determine the type and destination of the item.
The RFID reader is hung from the ceiling at a height of 15 feet above the 9 loading and unloading ports, and the location of the tags within 20 feet of the loading and unloading ports is determined to be within 6-12 inches.
According to Tiplady, GSA will continue to study how to use this system to obtain greater warehouse visibility.
The installation of this system is of great significance to the Department of Defense, as GSA provides a large part of the military supplies. By sticking to the labeling of materials, GSA assisted DLA to use RFID to track more goods. GSA and DLA provide 80% of American military supplies.
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