Application of UHF RFID technology in uniform inventory management

After more than a year of application testing of passive RFID tags in the uniform tracking process, the Swedish military factory decided to adopt UHF RFID solutions in the next 2-5 years. The RFID solution will also be used to track personal weapons and equipment to improve the efficiency of multi-regional management.

Beginning in 2004, Swedish military factories began testing various RFID solutions to ensure the visibility of uniforms shipped overseas. The RFID supply chain solution, called SCAR, mainly tests active RFID tags to monitor uniform goods shipped overseas. In 2012, FMLOG, the logistics management department of the Swedish military factory, and FMV, the Swedish military's raw material management department (mainly responsible for providing equipment, supplies and other related services to the military) jointly conducted a series of related tests on passive RFID technology. The test process was mainly for uniforms. Tracking of inventory management prior to distribution to soldiers.

The test solution includes labeled uniforms, a tray full of uniforms, a read-write channel with an embedded EPC Gen 2 UHF reader, and four read-write antennas. The read-write channel and read-write antenna are mainly used to read the ID code on the uniform tag.

Since 2004, FMV, the Swedish military's materials management arm, has been testing, evaluating and developing RFID solutions. In order to find the best solution for tracking uniform containers shipped abroad, the Swedish military's materials management department FMV and the solutions used by other military organizations abroad investigated and finally decided to adopt a solution that includes active RFID tags, receivers and Corresponding data management software, in which active RFID tags are installed on containers and pallets. The rfid solution has been accepted by the military, but the implementation time has not yet been announced.

A few years ago, while testing active RFID tags, FMLOG, the Swedish military's Logistics Management agency, expressed great interest in implementing passive RFID tags to track uniforms and other equipment, hoping that the RFID solution would reduce the time required to perform inventory counts. time. By understanding, the use of passive RFID tags can simplify the workflow and make the real-time inventory data more accurate.

In 2011, the Swedish military organization began to test passive EPC UHF RFID tags, mainly testing the management process of soldiers' equipment and solving the problem of equipment inventory management.

Several RFID reading and writing channels have been installed in the military warehouse in Revingehed, southern Sweden, and are also equipped with handheld RFID Readers and UHF EPC passive RFID tags. HiQ declined to disclose information such as the manufacturer and model of the tags and readers.

After the finished uniforms are shipped into the warehouse, workers first enter the product number into the factory's SAP software. Warehouse managers perform a warehouse inventory once a year and manually record the corresponding data, which takes about 30 hours to complete. With the implementation of the RFID test plan, all tags are affixed with passive UHF EPC tags. When warehouse workers perform inventory counts, it only takes about an hour to complete, greatly improving inventory counting efficiency.

The RFID reading and writing channel consists of a reader and four antennas, and mainly reads the ID code of the tag. The main goal of passing the reversible boxes and pallets loaded with uniforms through the read-write channel is to test the readability of the tags in different scenarios. The test results show that the read rate of the tags can reach 99%. At the same time, the factory also tested the PDA version of the RFID reader, but the test results were not satisfactory.

Based on the good test results, the Swedish military recognizes the application of passive RFID technology in inventory management and plans to update its software system in 2015 to support the implementation of RFID technology.

From 2015 to 2018, the Swedish military plans to apply passive RFID technology to soldier equipment management. At the same time, we are also considering applying this technology to equipment maintenance process management.