The US Congress mandates that the Department of Defense keeps track of and is accountable for all of their property down to the individual unique asset level. The DoD is arguably the largest organization in the world with estimates of 130 million individual assets in their custody. Keeping track of an inventory of this magnitude would be a logistical challenge in and of itself. But add to that, the dynamic element of items being procured, modified, relocated and eventually disposed of — and you will begin to see why it’s such an enormous challenge for the military.
One of the logistical challenges for the military is to keep track their information technology (IT) assets. The modern soldier has an arsenal of digital equipment available to them including smartphones, tablets and navigation equipment. The soldiers are supported by their Command and Control centers with an even greater amount of digital IT equipment. Many of these computers and IT assets contain highly sensitive information and need to be stored in secure areas. Sometimes the digital equipment are components of a larger assembly, or vehicle, and are not easily accessible.
This is all to say that the DoD has an enormous amount of digital equipment to account for. They do not have the time to perform manual inventories on their IT assets. They need a system that can rapidly (if not instantly) provide accountability.
Peter Collins recently authored an RFID Journal article – The Killer App for the Military: RFID that explains why the US Military should take steps to further leverage RFID technology to automate their IT assets. Read the full article here.
A2B Tracking’s president and CEO, Peter Collins, has worked with many industries, including the U.S. Department of Defense, on auto-ID policy development and implementation. He has played a key role as a consultant to the DoD in the department’s efforts to adopt the use of IUID and RFID technology since 2004.
