The 2006 Frost & Sullivan Product Innovation Award in the defense Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) supply chain market is conferred on Savi Technology, a provider of RFID-based solutions and services. The award recognises that Savi Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lockheed Martin Corporation has achieved success in implementing RFID-based networks to track, manage and secure supply chain assets and military consignment for coalition defense forces.
“As the world’s provider of RFID–based asset tracking systems to the global defence market, Savi Technology has won contracts with a number of international defence forces, including NATO, the US Department of Defense (DoD), the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Australian Defence Force, the Spanish Armed Froces, and Denmark’s Ministry of Defence,” notes Frost & Sullivan Defence Analyst, Graham Cushway. “Moreover, Savi Technology’s networks are interoperable, enabling NATO and its member countries to collaborate in real-time in tracking supplies for joint-force operations, such as from Europe through to Afghanistan.”
Savi Technology’s solutions were responsible in increasing the visibility of coalition forces’ supply chains during Operation Iraqi Freedom / Telic in 2003. The US Office of the Secretary of Defense affirmed that Savi Technology’s solutions helped improve warfighter confidence, reduce inventory by over 40 percent, improved fill rates of 77 percent to 89 percent and cut retail backlog requests for items by about 90 percent. A US General Accounting Office report concluded that had Savi’s RFID-based solutions been deployed during Desert Storm in the early 1990s the DoD could have saved more than USD 2 billion in wasted inventory.
In addition, Savi Technology has launched new product types for solving specific supply chain problems faced by its current clients. These include RFID tags that incorporate door-intrusion sensors that automatically transmit alerts to authorised parties whenever a container’s doors have been tampered with or opened when they weren’t supposed to be during their supply chain journey.
“In addition, a full line of environmental sensors embedded into these tags can monitor all kinds of conditions inside the container, such as temperature (a particular problem during Operation Iraqi Freedom, particularly in terms of medical supplies), humidity, and shock,” adds Mr. Cushway. “This is critical for high-risk cargo such as hazardous materials or temperature- and shock-sensitive cargo such as food, medical supplies or high-tech equipment. Recent advances include C-shaped tags that clamp tightly onto the container door so that the environmental-sensing component resides inside the container and the RF antennae that communicates with reader networks resides in a low-profile design on the outside of the container. This provides an extra measure of protection to the tag itself.”
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