The United States Air Force (USAF) is the largest and most technologically advanced air force in the world. With over 300,000 personnel on active duty, USAF physical assets include over 10,000 manned and unmanned aircraft, combat air vehicles, cruise missiles and ICBMs, based and deployed throughout the world.

What was needed

The USAF is held accountable for a vast number of assets spread around the world including aircraft vehicles, tools, and related equipment. Determining asset location and condition at any given time is crucial to USAF operations. At one time the USAF utilized manual data capture methods to collect asset information. A better approach was needed as multiple GAO audits showed that manually collected asset data was often inaccurate, untimely or missing. More recently, the USAF, like other military branches, has been asked to do more with less, leading to a reduction in the number of Air Force logisticians. Faced with smaller staffs, larger workloads, a quicker working pace, and a history of audit shortcomings and asset management inaccuracies, the USAF aggressively sought to automate asset tracking and logistics reporting.

Actions taken

Savi responded to the USAF’s requirements by creating a specialized version of its logistics informatics platform. This end-to-end system collected real-time information via bar-coded USAF assets, including asset location, status, and other data, from DoD-compliant active and passive RFID tags. After collecting and consolidating the data, Savi converted it into actionable operational information and presented it to USAF logisticians and decision-makers in the form of online or offline reports. The Savi platform was also easily integrated with existing USAF ERP and other back-office software systems for streamlined accounting and auditing.

Outcome

With real-time information at the fingertips of decision-makers, the USAF realized immediate benefits from its rollout of the Savi platform. During the pilot phase of deployment, USAF man-hours associated with locating accountable assets were reduced by 80%. In addition, over 99% of their assets were immediately located, and over $60K of accountable equipment was located off-site and returned to accountable units. With a fully automated data collection system, error-prone manual methods have been eliminated, further reducing manpower needs while improving the quality and accuracy of USAF asset data.

The United States Army is the largest national military force in the world. NATO is a intergovernmental military alliance between 28 member nations across North American and Europe.  NATO and Australia have developed meaningful, practical cooperation in a great number of areas, most notably in the fight against terrorism, research and technology, and non-proliferation initiatives.

What was needed

It is no surprise that the most challenging, most fluid, most dynamic supply chains support military forces wherever they are deployed. And as the nature of warfighting and peacekeeping evolves away from single-nation efforts and towards multi-national collaborations, the need to have precise, real-time logistical information in the hands of military planners and logisticians has become more critical. At any moment, there are literally tens of thousands of physical assets in motion across an operational theatre. Not surprisingly, the US Army, NATO and its Allies have aggressively evaluated and deployed technology to create real-time reports on asset location and status to give decision-makers the information they need to successfully complete their assigned missions.

Actions taken

The US Department of Defense turned to Savi, a pioneer in active RFID technology, for a solution that would provide real-time information on asset location and status. Savi delivered a complete software and hardware solution that automated the entire process of asset tracking and reporting. The Savi platform includes active RFID technology to broadcast asset location and status to sensors deployed in depots, warehouses, and forward areas. The Savi-designed software collects the real-time data from the sensors and converts it into actionable reports, including real-time maps, tabular reports and automated email alerts, to quickly put the most accurate data into the hands of the decision-makers who need it. Finally, the Savi platform is completely integrated into the Army’s back-office management and accounting software enable precise fiscal controls and auditing.

Outcome

Savi SmartChain more than meets the demanding requirements of the US Army. The system successfully provides logisticians with “total asset visibility” — real-time knowledge of the location and physical status of assets in operating theatres. The hardened active tags that Savi developed now define the standard asset tag used by the U.S. Department of Defense for all material. The network of Savi sensors has been expanded to create what is today the world’s largest integrated RFID-based tracking network.

The mission-certified success of  Savi SmartChain directly led to NATO’s and the Australian Defense Force’s decisions to deploy the Savi Technology platform to track their national military assets and to facilitate seamless logistics management of assets between national forces in coordinated operations. With “total asset visibility” these allied forces are able to confidently plan and execute complex missions in harsh environments.

The F-35 Lightning (also known as the Joint Strike Fighter) is the U.S. Department of Defense’s next generation aircraft for the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and U.S. allies. The F-35 introduces an array of cutting-edge technologies, including advanced airframe, autonomic logistics, avionics, propulsion systems, stealth, and armament.

What was needed

The F-35 Lightning II Program (also known as the Joint Strike Fighter Program) is the Department of Defense’s generation strike aircraft weapon systems for the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and our allies. The F-35 introduces an array of cutting-edge technologies, including advanced airframe, autonomic logistics, avionics, propulsion systems, stealth, and armament. Not surprisingly, the F-35 is one of the most complex aircraft ever manufactured, extending traditional manufacturing techniques with unique custom-built forms and tools. To add to the complexity, F-35s are assembled at a 680-acre, 153 building site. To keep costs down, the manufacturing teams share these expensive tool sets (often with 100 or more components). The tools are moved from building to building across the site to the teams that needed them for their work. Previously, a manually operated tool inventory system had been used to keep track of these specialized tools. To minimize manufacturing delays, and provide greater operational efficiency, the Prime Contractor, one of the world’s leading aircraft manufacturers, sought to provide manufacturing decision makers with accurate real-time reports on the tool location, condition and status of the unique specialized tools so that they could be more responsive to the needs of the manufacturing teams.

Actions taken

Savi SmartChain was an ideal solution for this urgent need. By collecting tool status data from active and passive tags placed directly on the tools, the Savi software was able to present decision-makers with real-time information describing tool location, condition, and status. Thousands of tools were tagged and incorporated into the new tool logistics system, which collected the logistics data and converted it into real-time reports on tool locations, condition and status. Online information displays, as well as email alerts detailing status or special conditions, gave manufacturing decision-makers unprecedented visibility into the tool-based processes. At the same time, the Savi platform was completely integrated into the legacy enterprise software systems that the Contractor depended upon, so the back-office accounting, compliance, inventory and audit systems had complete access to this valuable data stream.

Outcome

Thanks to Savi SmartChain, manufacturing efficiency increased. Idle tools were put into service more quickly, lost tools were located, and overall scheduling accuracy increased. And because Savi SmartChain automates the data collection process, manual entry errors were completely eliminated. Finally, the end-to-end integration of Savi  with legacy in-house systems reduced the human effort required to prepared externally-facing reports for government mandated accounting, compliance and audits.  Savi SmartChain was a prime contributor to the overall success of the F-35 project, countless man-hours were saved as management gained a greater visibility and understanding of the location, status and usage patterns of the specialized assembly tools.