nato rfid supply chain

7/28/2019 Nato Rfid Supply Chain

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Those episodes of m*a*s*h when

Radar gets a load of swimsuits in the

dead of winter and a half-million tonguedepressors instead of medicine werefunny, but in real life, its no joke when

the supply chain breaks down and lives areat stake. During the first Gulf War in theearly 1990s, the U.S. military found that outthe hard way.

In the Gulf War, the United States wasted$2 billion. They shipped five containers if some-one needed one in hopes of finding some-thing. After that, they came back and said, Letsaddress this, said Bruce Jacquemard, execu-tive vice president of worldwide sales for Savi

Technology, in Sunnyvale, Calif.

U.S. military officials came up with a planto address the massive supply chain ineffi-

ciencies. The U.S. Department of Defense signeda contract with Savi in 1994 to build out andmaintain its ITV (In-Transit Visibility) network,now the worlds largest RFID (radio-frequencyidentification) cargo tracking system, stretchingacross 46 countries and 2,000 locations.

The system has worked so well that theU.S. ITV network has become a model for alliednations, and it could be a good proof of con-cept to the IT departments of U.S. consumerproducts and retail businesses that are nowjust starting to experiment with RFID.

In 2001, following the attacks on the World

Trade Center and the Pentagon, NATO got

BY RENEE BOUCHER FERGUSON

NATO ISNT WAITING FOR RFID TO CATCH ON; IT HAS ALREADY

BUILT A GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN WITH THE TECHNOLOGY

RFID:LOCKED& LOADED

RFID:LOCKED& LOADED

Soldiers unloada CH-47D Chinookhelicopter from a C-17Globemaster III aircraftin Afghanistan.


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NATO RFIDSUPPLY CHAIN

AFGHANISTAN

KABUL

COLOGNE

BRUNSSUM

GEILENKIRCHEN

TERMEZ

UZBEKISTAN

GERMANY

NETH

.

Goods bound for Afghanistan are

tagged with ST-654 SaviTags.

Savis SR-650 and Symbols

SMR-650 readers log the

position of the cargo. Data is

transmitted through the Savi

SmartChain CMS, enabling

supply managers to view

where the cargo is along the

supply chain.

Supplies are routed to the Joint Force

Command Headquarters in Brunssum,

Netherlands, (below) and then to

Geilenkirchen Air Base in Germany, a NATO

Airborne Early Warning and Control Forcebase. From Germany, supplies are airlifted

to Kabul, Afghanistan.

There is a

second supply

chain route from

Cologne, Germany,

to Termez,

Uzbekistan, and

then into Kabul.

Symbol SMR-650 reader

involved, sending troops andsupplies to Afghanistan and, inthe process, modernized its sup-ply chain. The United King-dom Ministry of Defence and theDenmark Ministry of Defencealso built out ITV networks,and the ADF (AustralianDefence Force) has started itsown initiative with NATO, as hasSpain and Israel.

Part of the history is that the

U.S., of course, is one of theNATO nations. It had successwith RFID in other theaters. Asthey began partnering withNATO in Afghanistan, theybrought it to the attention of theNATO community that wecould really benefit from RFIDwith the ISAF [InternationalSecurity Assistance Force] sup-ply chain, said Brent Bingham,project manager for the NATOConsultation, Control and

Command Agency, in Brussels,Belgium.

A successful Phase 1 RFIDpilot was initiated in 2004, andNATO is currently in the secondphase of an interim imple-mentation to RFID-enable fivekey nodes along its ISAF sup-ply chain that stretches from theNetherlands and two points inGermany to Uzbekistan andinto Afghanistan. The goal: tobuild out an RFID backbone, orinfrastructure, that other coun-

tries can hook into with theirsupply chain systems and tofacilitate a standards-based,interactive and interoperablesupply chain among alliednations.

Despite the interim tag,the system is fully functional andwill form the basis for a moreformalized Capability Packagethat will provide a comprehen-sive infrastructure with globalsupply chain nodes in the future.

Its just that, in the war on ter-ror, NATO found it had to act fast.

[NATOs] operations com-mander requested the capabil-ity to be there rather urgentlyand didnt want to wait for pack-ages, so thats where we comein, said Dr. Levent Molla-mustafaoglu, principal scientistand logistics section leader forNATOs Operations ResearchDivision, in The Hague, Nether-lands. Because it is interim,[the ISAF RFID project] has a

limited scope, limited nodesin which it is installed for a lim-ited part of the supply chain.But what we are trying to pro-vide is interoperability withnational systems.

Following a yearlong assess-ment of its initial RFID back-bone that Savi deployed forNATO, the NC3A awarded Savia second contract in December2005. Savi will upgrade andsustain operational support for

NATOs ITV network, includ-ing the build-out of additional

RFID tags and readers and anupgrade to NATOs existingsoftware. It also calls for theinstallation of Savis CMS (Con-signment Management Solu-tion), which will enable NATOto maintain near-real-timevisibility into the supply chain.

For Bingham, the goal is forRFID to become less of a gee-whiz technology and more of anintegral component of NATOs

global IT infrastructure.The old way isnt working,Bingham said. Theres a lotof motivation to have this bethe primary mechanism justbecause commanders getmore I dont know answersand shrugs of the shoulders tothe question [of Wheres mygoods?]. The primary metricthat has a value right now isjust to have visibility. Oncewe have visibility, then well

figure out how to improvethe process.

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Upgrading the networksavis cms 1.0 is designed to

keep track of and manage con-signments tagged with alltypes of AIDC (AutomaticIdentification and Data Col-lection) devicessuch as sen-sors, bar codes, and active and

passive RFID tagsfor alliedmilitary organizations. It pro-vides exception-based man-agement alerts and support forvisibility of assets.

During its first phase, NATOdetermined that the RFID-based network met its Stan-dardization Agreement, gar-nering a stamp of approval fromall 26 member nations inNATOs Infrastructure Com-mittee. The approval allowed

member nations, or those withNATO observer status, suchas Australia, to share the cost ofthe overall project and, moreimportant, to integrate withNATOs CMS system.

Our objective now is toupgrade the network so thatmember nations can use theirown tracking systems fornational consignments whileenabling them to be interop-erable with NATOs RF [radiofrequency] network for multi-national, joint-force opera-tions, said Bingham.

Earlier this year, Savi beganupgrading NATOs existing sys-tem with a routing code devel-oped in concert with the NATOAsset Tracking Group, a multi-national group that sets stan-dards for logistics and supplychain processes.

The way we designed the

code is each RFID code hasits own ID tag. In the IDheader, we put in a uniquecode, in concert with an ISOstandard, so when you writethat tag in the supply chain, theowners routing code is writtenin as well, said Eric Gill, pro-gram manager at Savi. Sowhen [goods] go by a reader,it doesnt matter whose tag itisthe Savi Reader gets it.

The reader sends the tag infor-

mation to a local site managerthrough the CMS server. When

the server receives the mes-sage, the first thing it does ischeck the routing code. If therouting code belongs to NATO,it accepts the message and sendsan XML message to NATOsLOGFAS (Logistic FunctionalArea Services) system.

If the reader picks up a mes-sage that has a non-NATO rout-ing code, it has a lookup tablethat sends the message to theowner nations server. What allthis means is that nations canshare their RFID reader infra-structure, according to Gill, whosaid Savis CMS system has beenvery much designed aroundinternational parameters.

The NATO ISAF supplychain starts at the Joint Force

Command Headquarters inBrunssum, the Netherlands. Itthen flows to NATO Air BaseGeilenkirchen in Germany,where cargo aircraft takes ingoods. From there, suppliesare flown to Kabul, Afghani-stan. A secondary supply chainroute begins in Cologne, Ger-many, and then moves to Ter-mez, Uzbekistan, and intoAfghanistan.

Were presently about 25percent of the way into thesite upgrade, said Gill. Wehave done the server, and wereat Brunssum at the moment.My engineering team will be

traveling to Afghanistan.The Savi team is implement-

ing Symbol Technologies PDT8146 mobile computers thatare attached to Savi handheldreaders. At the same time, theteam has added Savi MobileReaders that can

read bar codes inNATO consign-ments, as well asRFID.

With militaryconsignments,particularly inm u l t i n a t i o n a lenvironments, anautomatic fixedreader is veryvaluable, accord-ing to Gill.

Youve got one nation run-ning it a couple months, thenanother nation takes over,Gill said. To have an automaticsystem means less training andreducing the logistics footprint.

NATO wants soldiers out inthe field, but there are more sol-diers manning logistics, Gillsaid.

Despite the supply chainconsisting of only five nodes, akasupply transfer locations, thelogistics issues are complex. Eachcountry involvedthe UnitedStates, the United Kingdom,Denmark, Australia, Israel andNATO itselfsends its own sup-

plies to support soldiers in theAfghanistan theater. Each coun-trys army has its own require-ments and logistics processes,and each uses its own supplychain.

While NATO has not yet com-piled any statistics,

Binghams groupestimates thereare many thou-sands of spareparts and piecesofequipment mov-ing through theISAF supply chain,both NATO-ownedand membercountry-owned.

Once consign-ments are

shipped to their starting pointsin Europe and move throughthe supply chain, there are addi-tional challenges to contendwith, namely Internet connec-tions, ever-changing personneland basic change managementissues.

Nothing is ever easy orfree, said Bingham. Wevehad some unique challenges.When you start getting out inUzbekistanand, unfortu-nately, even GermanyInter-net connectivity has been thebiggest challenge. Weve had tolearn to anticipate and plan wayahead in terms of getting thosethings in place. You cant justwalk into a place and say, Turnme on.

Increasing visibilityat the same time, there is a

lot of personnel rotation, so

its a challenge to keep oper-ators up to speed and trainedon the CMS system. Withthe project to RFID-enableeach of the supply chain nodesstill in transition betweenthe pilot phase and fully oper-ational in Phase 2, Binghamsaid those out in the field arestill on a learning curve aswell.

A commander right now hasno visibility. He asks a question

and, 10 phone calls later, some-one finally finds the consign-

NATOs Bingham: The primary

metric right now is visibility.

Links in NATOs supply chain

NATO RFID implementation along ISAF supply chain

Savi Readers: SR-650 placed at key transportation nodes

along ISAF network

SaviTags: ST-654 affixed to containers and air pallets

Symbol 8146 handheld readers

AIDC devices for allied military

organizations: sensors, bar codes, pas-

sive and active RFID tags, GPS

Savi CMS system that member

nations use to share information on

joint consignments; hosted at NC3As

facility in The Hague

CMS interfaces with the NATO

LOGFAS logistics IT system

Three-tier server stackthat runs CMS, Sun Microsystems

servers running Solaris and BEA Systems WebLogic for the

Web application server

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