NATO Awards Savi Technology a New Contract for RFID Network Upgrades to Track Defence Consignments
14 December 2005
The NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) has awarded Savi Technology a new contract to upgrade and sustain operational support of the RFID-based network Savi built last year to track multi-national defence consignments between Europe and Afghanistan. The contract followed a year-long assessment of the RFID "backbone" Savi deployed for NATO.
The contract calls for purchase of additional active, data-rich Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and readers as well as network wide software enhancements to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) supply chain, stretching from the Netherlands and Germany through Uzbekistan to Kabul, Afghanistan.
"NATO has concluded that this type of system can greatly contribute to the Commander's situational awareness in the logistics arena," said Brent Bingham, NC3A Project Manager. "The RFID air-bridge built last year by Savi from Central Europe into the theatre of operations confirmed that this technology meets the general requirements to operate on a multi-national basis. Our objective now is to upgrade the network so that member nations can use their own tracking systems for national consignments while also enabling them to be interoperable with NATO's RF network for multi-national, joint force operations."
The upgrades include installation of the Savi SmartChain(R) Consignment Management Solution (CMS), which will enable NATO to maintain nearly real-time supply chain management and visibility, and will provide an interoperable solution for member nations to share information on both national and joint multi-national consignments. Savi's RFID-based network was found to meet NATO's Standardisation Agreement for 'best commercial practice" requirements for asset and consignment tracking and were approved by all 26 member nations.
"NATO's approval to build on its initial RFID In-Transit Visibility (ITV) network is a major step towards improving upon logistics operations among allied defence organisations." said Bruce Jacquemard, Savi's Executive VP of Worldwide Sales. "The ability of interoperable RFID-based networks to link with each other when appropriate enhances in-transit visibility of supplies and ultimately provides greater confidence to the war fighter needing the right material in the right place at the right time."
Savi has also built RFID-based ITV networks for NATO member nations, including the UK MoD and the Denmark MoD and is implementing the CMS for the Australian Defence Force. For the past decade, Savi has helped build and maintain the U.S. DoD's ITV network - the world's largest active RFID cargo tracking system.
The contract calls for additional Savi readers to be placed along the ISAF Network, Savi tags to be affixed to containers and air pallets.
The upgraded CMS 1.0 is specially designed to track and manage consignments tagged with all types of Automatic Identification and Data Collection (AIDC) devices for allied military organizations, including management alerts and support for 'nested visibility' of assets and their contents as well as environmental conditions in transit. AIDC devices can range from sensors and barcodes to passive and active RFID tags as well as GPS.
Source: PR Newswire Europe
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