Luke AFB in Glendale, AZ is home to the Air Force’s 56th Fighter Wing. The 56th Security Forces Squadron (SFS) at Luke recently replaced a bar code tracking system in its 25,000-square-foot storage warehouse with an RFID (radio frequency identification) solution to better manage equipment inventory for staff on the base and personnel deployed abroad. The warehouse stocks two types of inventory. Supply inventory is used to support on-base staff and includes everything from pens and pencils to body armor, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), and gun holsters. Mobility inventory, on the other hand, is used to build 463L aircraft pallets that can hold up to 10,000 pounds of equipment and must be ready to ship within 24 hours. These “readiness pallets” are designed to support teams deployed in foreign battle zones and contain everything necessary to survive for five days without base support —weapons, ammunition, food, water, generators, fuel, radios, etc. In 2003, the base deployed a batch bar code tracking system that fed inventory information into a stand-alone database application. This system did not allow staff to track routine maintenance and calibration schedules, didn’t provide real-time inventory visibility, and posed some security and accountability issues. “We were the only location using bar codes to track our gear and the deployment gear,” says Matthew Owen, resources advisor for security forces at Luke AFB. “Our headquarters at the Air Education and Training Command in San Antonio wanted to be able to see what each base has in real time, and we came up with an RFID tracking system to piggyback on what we’d already done with bar codes.” In 2008, the SFS began investigating possible RFID solutions and teamed up with integrator American Barcode and RFID

Source: Integrated Solutions Magazine