Measuring the Effect of RFID Technology on Movement of U.S. Army Resupply Cargo

This research is an analysis of the effect that the added in-transit visibility (ITV) associated with applying Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to Army resupply cargo makes on total cycle time (from entry into to exit from the system) within the Air Mobility Command (AMC) portion of the Defense Transportation System. Although information technology applications are known to contribute to ITV, there has been no attempt to quantify it despite a perception held by at least part of the DoD community that ITV initiatives will reduce logistics response time by improving cycle time. This study was aimed at quantifying RFID technology\u27s contribution to cycle time by comparing a set of RFID tagged shipments to a set of non-RFID tagged shipments moving into the Bosnia Herzegovina theater of operations. Although there are agencies looking at worldwide implementation of this system, the system under study is currently the only one of its kind. The major finding of this research is that RFID tagged shipments actually took longer to move through the AMC system. Port Hold Time at the point of embarkation was 2 to 2.5 times longer for RFID tagged shipments and had a total possession time 19 percent longer than non-RFID tagged shipments