Urgent: DOD RFID Summit for Industry meeting on April 6-8, 2004

The Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics signed a memorandum outlining policy for the use of RFID within the Department of Defense (DoD). The strategy calls for taking maximum advantage of the inherent life-cycle asset management efficiencies that can be realized with integration of RFID throughout DoD. Leveraging this technology to improve our ability to get the customer the right materiel, at the right time, and in the right condition is a critical part of our End-to-End Warfighter Support initiative.

The new policy addresses two general types of RFID tags: (1) active, which contains an internal power source, enabling the tag to hold more data and has a longer "read" range and (2) passive, which does not contain any power source, holds a minimum of data and has a shorter "read" range.

The policy directs the adoption of specific business rules for the active, high data capacity RFID currently used in the DoD operational environment to ensure continued support for ongoing Combatant Commander in-transit visibility requirements and operations.

The policy states that DoD will be an early adopter of innovative, passive RFID technology that leverages the Electronic Product Code (EPC) and compatible RFID tags. The policy will require suppliers to put passive RFID tags on lowest possible piece part/case/pallet packaging by January 2005.

An industry summit was held on December 2, 2003 to begin discussions with suppliers about the policy. Implementation pilots are underway. An updated draft policy will be released in January 2004, and another meeting with industry will be held in the first quarter of 2004. A final version of this policy will be issued July 2004

Upcoming Events

The Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Supply Chain Integration) will host a second DOD RFID Summit for Industry meeting on April 6-8, 2004 to continue to execute the DOD RFID Policy. This meeting will be held on April 6-8, 2004 at the Washington Hilton & Towers, Washington, DC. Please go to www.dodait.com for registration information.