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Aug. 12, 2011—More than a year after its launch, the Brazilian Army’s RFID Adoption Program has improved its process for receiving Class II products, consisting of such items as uniforms, tents, helmets and boots. The system was provided and installed by RFID solutions firm Seal Technology, at the Army’s 21st Supply Warehouse, located in São Paulo, with assistance from GS1 Brazil, which provided the Electronic Product Code (EPC) numbers and consulting services.

The Brazilian military commenced its RFID adoption program in 2005, when Luiz Antônio Silveira Lopes, an associate professor at the Military Institute of Engineering, led a project tracking Army parachutes via EPC Gen 2 passive RFID tags. He had been searching for an opportunity to test the technology’s ability to improve logistics visibility for the Brazilian military, he says, and began with a test involving between 3,000 and 5,000 parachutes (which had previously been tracked using bar-coded labels), to determine whether the tags could be read by a fixed interrogator as the parachutes were moved within the Army’s supply center. After determining that the technology worked properly, Lopes and the Army began looking into implementing a full deployment; five years later, the system to track Class II military supplies was the result.

In the case of Class II supplies, the Brazilian Army’s challenge was to monitor soldiers’ equipment as it was shipped from the Army’s warehouses to those soldiers. The goal was to make the supply chain of uniforms and personal effects more visible, and to automate the inventory-taking, shipping and receiving processes, thereby resulting in fewer mistakes.

“The adoption of RFID technology in logistics was aimed at increasing control and improving the management of supplies,” says Colonel Luiz Antonio de Almeida Ribeiro, who, along with Lopes, led the RFID deployment project. Although the Army is interested in how RFID can be employed to track a variety of items moving through the supply chain, it initiated the system to track uniforms, footwear, and protection and security equipment, such as helmets and vests, he says, “because these materials have a high turnover,” and because they are less likely to block RF transmissions than items containing a large quantity of metal or liquid.

Goods arrive at the Army’s distribution facility directly from vendors, and are then shipped to Army units and soldiers throughout Brazil. Prior to the system’s installation, Army personnel utilized paper and pen to manually track each shipment’s location and status, and made telephone calls to provide status updates to those who shipped or received the items.

Aug. 10, 2011—Insurance company Hartford Financial Services Group—also known as The Hartford—is recommending that its customers employ Intelleflex’s RFID system for tracking the conditions under which fresh produce is transported throughout the supply chain. The partnership involves the use of Intelleflex’s XC3 RFID technology to monitor temperature conditions at the pallet level, by placing ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) EPC Gen 2 RFID tags with built-in temperature sensors within each container, or on every pallet, and by then using Intelleflex readers to capture that data throughout the supply chain.

The partnership was established between Intelleflex and Hartford’s corporate venture division, Hartford Ventures.

Thanks to this partnership, Hartford could request information from clients in order to gain a greater understanding of supply chain conditions at the time that loss of product occurred due to spoilage. And customers using the system would benefit not only from greater visibility into the supply chain, as well as the opportunity to respond to temperature fluctuations, but also from better insurance plans from Hartford, due to the reduced risk of product spoilage. In some cases, for example, clients that might not have previously qualified for certain insurance policies would now be able to do so with the RFID system in place.
What’s more, by using Intelleflex’s XC3 RFID technology, existing clients of Hartford could qualify for a reduction in their insurance premiums, according to Alexander McGinley, the company’s marine underwriting officer, who oversees insurance policies involving the transportation of goods. For Hartford, he says, the solution could provide valuable data from its insured customers in the event of a claim.

“If a covered cause of loss were to have occurred to covered property—spoilage, in this instance—we would ask the insured to furnish us with the temperature records of the [relevant] transit venture,” McGinley explains. With the RFID data, he says, “we would have a better understanding of when the product spoiled, in whose care, custody or control, etc.”

Aug. 4, 2011—Two Colorado suppliers of medical marijuana are employing an RFID system provided by Denver startup LeafTrack, to provide visibility into the health of plants as they grow, as well as to meet the state’s stringent requirements for tracking the drug, from seed to user. The system, which is also being piloted by several other marijuana growers and manufacturers, allows a window into the life and health of each marijuana plant, while also tracking that plant’s harvest yield, as well as its transition to a consumable product purchased by a patient, in a variety of forms, such as incorporated into brownies. Data regarding the medical marijuana can be accessed by the business owner via LeafTrack’s software, as well as by consumers via LeafTrack’s Findmary Web site. Governmental agencies (17 U.S. states and the District of Columbia currently have medical marijuana programs) could also access information from the LeafTrack software.

LeafTrack was founded in 2010 to provide logistics services to the medical-marijuana industry. The organization would pick up marijuana from growers—who plant, grow and harvest the leaves and flower buds—and deliver the raw material to dispensaries that process it into consumable form, and then transport the finished product to stores that sell products to patients. LeafTrack not only transported the raw materials, but also attached bar-coded labels to containers in which the raw materials were packed, in order to help track them. However, says Reid Hanson, LeafTrack’s founder, the company began to see, with the introduction of new state regulations, that the greatest need was in the tracking of the product for businesses and for the state, from its origins as a seed to its sale to a consumer. As a result, the firm exited the logistics business and developed an RFID-based system that medical marijuana suppliers could employ themselves.

Currently, the company is marketing its tracking system to medical marijuana dispensaries and growers nationwide, as well as to businesses that provide other high-value plants that require close tracking during growth, such as saffron.

Medical marijuana is legally produced and sold in a number of states, but is closely regulated by governmental bodies. In July of this year, Colorado’s Department of Revenue issued medical marijuana regulations requiring that the product be tracked from seed to sale, and indicated that the state will eventually require the use of EPC Gen 2 ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags, according to Julie Postlethwait, the public information officer for the Department of Revenue’s Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division. She adds that the state is presently working with Franwell, a provider of track-and-trace technology, to develop an RFID system that may be completed by early next year. At that time, Postlethwait explains, the state will create regulations regarding how the UHF RFID system would need to be implemented and used. It is possible, she notes, that Colorado may recommend specific RFID systems, or sell tags itself. “Until that time,” she reports, “the department doesn’t recommend substantive purchases of technology [in an attempt to meet new requirements] prior to the rules and regulations being issued.”

Growers have traditionally provided information about their plants to Colorado authorities via paperwork, and the state also conducts periodic inspections, at which time an inventory of the product may be taken. After the marijuana was harvested, the raw material was often transported to another party that processed and sold the product. Colorado’s new regulations, however, dictate that 70 percent of the product supplier’s inventory on hand must be made from marijuana grown by that same company. The two product providers that are presently utilizing the LeafTrack system are altogether tagging approximately 60,000 plants per four-month cycle, and are serving up to 10,000 customers. LeafTrack’s customers have asked to remain unnamed.

With the LeafTrack system, when seedlings reach several weeks of age, each plant’s description (condition and date of planting) and ID number are entered into the LeafTrack software, so that they can then be tracked throughout their lifetime. LeafTrack designed a plastic strip—similar to the RFID wrist or ankle bands used on infants in some hospital nurseries—with an embedded EPC Gen 2 RFID inlay from SK&T Integration. The front of the band, supplied by Precision Dynamic Corp. (PDC), is printed with the RFID inlay’s unique ID number in text and bar-code form, for those without RFID readers. A band is wrapped around each plant’s stem, and the tag’s RFID and bar-code numbers are scanned and linked together in the system, by means of an Intermec CN3 handheld computer with an IP30 RFID reader and running LeafTrack software, in order to manage the read data and forward that information to the back-end system.

July 29, 2011—Flemming Cargo Securement (FCS), a transportation monitoring and recovery services company, is partnering with wireless technology firm OnAsset Intelligence to provide a part-technology, part-manned solution for securing cargo as it is transported by truck from one location to another along the supply chain. The solution employs FCS’ manned responses to alerts issued by OnAsset’s cellular and sensor-based system. The partners can also provide RFID technology, built into OnAsset’s SmartContainer solution, designed for instances in which a logistics company or manufacturer has high-value items to monitor, thereby requiring not just updates via a GSM cellular transmission if a truck’s trailer is tampered with, but also an alert in the event that an RFID-tagged item is removed from a specific RFID-enabled container.

For the past year, according to Ray Flemming, FCS’ president and CEO, OnAsset has provide FCS with its Sentry 400 device, which includes sensors that measure temperature, air pressure, humidity, light and shock, among other conditions, in a trailer or in the back of a truck. The device transmits its own unique ID number and sensor data at regular intervals to area GSM cellular towers, and the Sentry system software determines the location of the device (and thus the vehicle), based on triangulation of the towers.

Customers that want greater security can opt, instead, for SmartContainer device integrated into a product’s shipping container. Like the Sentry 400, the SmartContainer device can issue an alert if a container is opened, or if temperatures exceed a specific threshold, but SmartContainer’s built-in RFID reader can detect whether or not tagged products remain within the container, says Nikki Cuban, OnAsset’s marketing and business development VP,

OnAsset developed its SmartContainer—which it calls an All-in-One Secure Shipping solution, with built-in sensors and GSM capabilities identical to those incorporated into the Sentry device—as well as an ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) EPC Gen 2 RFID reader (the company, Cuban says, has no preference with regard to vendors). The SmartContainer also has an infrared camera that automatically takes pictures when the container is opened. OnAsset can install its SmartContainer technology in Pelican cases in a variety of sizes, Cuban says, though the system can be fitted into any reusable container in which users may already transport their goods. Users would need to tag their own products, such as artwork, high-value documents, tools or precious metals.

While in transit, the reader captures the unique ID numbers of all tags within the container, and forwards that information to a server via the GSM cellular connection, indicating such actions as the removal of one or more items, the opening of the container, or changing environmental conditions within the container. The container is designed for transporting high-value items by air or land, to provide greater coverage of items within a truck or on a ship. Upon reaching its destination, the container is then returned to its point of origin, as any other reusable container would be.

To date, Cuban says, only the Sentry 400 is being used by FCS’ customers, but FSC could also provide its customers with the SmartContainer, if they request it, in order to attain additional security for their products.