Military: Making materials handling work for the government
Just as a factory needs lift trucks, conveyor belts and accurate inventory counts, so does the United States military.
By Allison Manning, Associate Editor -- Modern Materials Handling, 11/26/2008
Moving supplies through one of the largest agencies in the world isn’t easy. Just as a factory needs lift trucks, conveyor belts and accurate inventory counts, so does the United States military.
Whether peacetime or during war, “it’s extremely important to get the right item to the right place at the right time,” Colonel Alan B. Will, formerly chief of staff of the second Marine logistics group, told Modern.
A challenge for the military, however, can be the environment those lift trucks, conveyors and other materials are being brought to, such as the Middle East.
“You’re out in the middle of the darn desert,” said Will, who is a member of Modern’s editorial advisory board. “You can’t set up brick and mortar warehouse.”
“What you find, it’s still materials handling and storage, but it’s somewhat simplified so it can handle the environment,” Will said.
The military often turns to private companies to supply them with technology or maintenance to machinery. Recently the Defense Logistics Agency teamed up with non-profit technology developer Concurrent Technologies Corp, hydrogen supplier Air Products and Chemicals and fuel cell power product creator Hydrogenics Corp to complete the process of developing fuel cell technology.
The Defense Logistics Agencyawarded global security company Lockheed Martin a 10-year contract to provide maintenance and parts to support all of the military’s land-based vehicles.
“We try to harness the research and development of private companies,” Will said. “It’s cost effective, and we get the latest technology.”
The same is true for maintenance contracts. “We find that in the private industry, generally those companies have the latest and greatest information and service on equipment,” Will said. “Those technicians have already been trained in the latest service equipment.”
Will estimated that about 95% of equipment the military buys is from commercial vendors. “It’s just not cost effective for military to get into manufacturing,” he said.
The DoD also signed a contract with CDO Technologies to deliver passive RFID hardware, software and professional services, worth up to $75.5 million.
Before implementing RFID scanning, a piece of paper was attached to an item being shipped, and information would have to be physically written down on that piece of paper, as the item was shipped across the world. There’s a significant error rate associated with that method, Will said.
With barcodes, information is able to be scanned, including the requisition number, location, quantity and unit. “There’s an error rate of almost nothing,” Will said.
With the development of RFID tags, the military was able to update their database with the location of containers as they passed in the vicinity of interrogators, eliminating the need for someone to scan it.
Will said he’d like to see the development of RFID technology to be a bit stronger, moving into less expensive passive RFID tags. Passive tags are able to be disposed of, and don’t have to be tracked, because of their low cost. Active tags cost about $80, Will said, necessitating concern over tag recovery. When he was in Iraq in 2005, Will said there was only about a 20% recovery rate of the tags.
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