Courtesy Photo | Travis Smith of Naval Supply Systems Command Business Systems Center conducts a rapid...... read more read more
The Naval Autonomous Data Collection System (NADACS) reached the major milestone of establishing Initial Operation Capability (IOC) at Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) Fleet Logistics Center (FLC) Norfolk Regional Supply Office (RSO) Oceana, 26 May.
“Congressional and Departmental dictates require DoD to improve its ability to maintain and track material, assets and equipment with a high degree of accuracy and accountability, “ explained Hal Casey, director of NAVSUP 065, Department of the Navy (DoN) and Department of Defense (DoD) Systems. “By leveraging emerging technology and learning and then applying what works in industry faster than we have in the past, we seek to implement a series of complementing technologies that improve our supply chain operations, while at the same time providing improved visibility, accuracy and auditability.”
The DoD mandate to inventory all materiel every year is an aggressive but achievable goal. In order to meet this goal, NAVSUP has to automate the process and NADACS is the first step in that process. NADACS improves asset visibility and enhances mission effectiveness and readiness by utilizing passive radio frequency identification (RFID) and advanced cloud technologies which provide enterprise-wide logistics insights. Across the Navy, these insights will help to increase the overall end-to-end (E2E) supply chain velocity, shortening turnaround times and moving parts in the system faster. Increasing E2E Velocity is one of the main pillars in Naval Sustainment System-Supply, the Navy’s program to transform its supply chains and drive higher performance.
RSO users were enabled in the system and trained last month on the hand-held RFID scanners enabling them to collect inventory data from the warehouse floor and upload the data to the system. Various commercial companies use RFID technology in their warehouses for asset visibility.
NADACS has multi-source data collection capability including hand-held, robotic and fixed RFID scanners; external file exchanges; mesh geo location; and internet-of-things (IOT) data. These capabilities permit book-to-floor, floor-to-book, and wall-to-wall inventory data collection, comparison and assessment. Within minutes of being enabled, one of the RSO users started collecting data for analysis and review.
Looking ahead, additional capability will be incrementally enabled and tested by the RSO users. These capabilities will include adding the data feed from Navy Data Platform (NDP) which will provide the book-to-floor data comparison along with the floor-to-floor function. Following that will be the enablement of the mesh tag capability, allowing the tracking of equipment and vehicles.
NDP is a data warehouse designed to provide users and developers secure access to financial, supply chain, workforce management, and acquisition data in easily consumable formats.
As the initial users of the system, the Oceana team sets the stage for all other sites that will eventually use NADACS. This includes refining the business processes pertaining to RFID tagging and reviewing the data flow of information in the system.
NAVSUP 065, is the home of the Navy’s Automatic Identification Technology Program Office (AIT PO) and as the Navy’s lead for digital tracking and Total Asset Visibility. They identified an innovative solution for some of the issues NAVSUP has seen in the past. Working with the research and development community and the Logistic Innovation Cell (LogIC) at NAVSUP, Casey pursued some Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) / DoN Rapid Innovation Funding (RIF) and put together a solution.
With RIF funding available, NAVSUP 065 instigated an “Agile” project to put the various data sources and tracking capabilities together. As a result, NADACS is evolving to provide a near real-time ability to capture, assimilate, compare and display data from multiple data streams. Additionally the system has been designed to be ‘hardware agnostic,’ in other words, it can adapt to consume data from a variety of different hardware manufacturers. This allows us to pivot rapidly and upgrade to new hardware as it comes to market and contributes to the avoidance of vendor lock-in.
NADACS use and application allows a scalable data view from the warehouse level up to yard and industrial complex levels. The most common application employs passive RFID tags to track item locations and quantity. Additionally, interconnected mesh tags connected to a gateway can track equipment location, use, and condition via IOT sensor information such as temperature, shock, vibration, movement, humidity/moisture, altitude, or pressure. Alert systems are established for on-hand comparisons, inventory irregularities, Geo-Fence limits and threshold boundary violations.
NAVSUP 065 team will continue to monitor and assist Oceana personnel as the new functions are added.
While starting with the NAVSUP FLC at Naval Air Station Oceana, the AIT PO is already laying out an implementation plan to support other FLC locations. Working with the Naval Enterprise Sustainment Technology Team, NAVSUP 065 has already discussed future implementation with the Naval Shipyards and Fleet Readiness Centers to address how NADACS can support those activities as well. Upcoming efforts will include supporting the DoN Chief Information Officer’s progress in 5G by adding 5G communications to NADACS and implementing NADACS on a base wide basis at Norfolk Naval Station. This would give the ability to track anything tagged to be tracked on base.
“NADACS is a maturing tool set, owned by the Navy that is capable of supporting the entire DoN enterprise at some level,” concluded Casey. “It is now no longer a question of ‘Can you track your material,’ but more of ‘What do you want to track?’”
NAVSUP FLC Norfolk is one of eight FLCs under Commander, NAVSUP. Headquartered in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, NAVSUP employs a diverse, worldwide workforce of more than 22,500 military and civilian personnel. NAVSUP and the Navy Supply Corps conduct and enable supply chain, acquisition, operational logistics and Sailor & family care activities with our mission partners to generate readiness and sustain naval forces worldwide to prevent and decisively win wars. Learn more at www.navsup.navy.mil, www.facebook.com/navsup and https://twitter.com/navsupsyscom.
| Date Taken: | 07.07.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 07.07.2021 09:58 |
| Story ID: | 400439 |
| Location: | OCEANA, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 418 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, NAVSUP applies tech to accelerate inventory management, by Russ Stewart, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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