DOD awards more RFID deals

Earlier this month the Army awarded a third series of contracts under the Defense Department’s radio frequency identification (RFID) initiative.

The Army awarded 17 contracts July 14 under the Group 4-Electronic Product Code (EPC) Technical Engineering Services portion of DOD's Passive RFID EPC-1 program. The blanket purchase agreements for design, installation, testing, training, requirements analysis and site survey went to:

Anteon

Automated Tracking Systems

BearingPoint

Booz Allen Hamilton

CDO Technologies

CODEplus

Concurrent Technologies

IBM

INTECS International

Intermec

Maden Technologies

Northrop Grumman

Savi Technology

SYS-TEC

Sytex

Unisys

VeriSign

“This program provides DOD and the Coast Guard with a fully interoperable mechanism that enables more cost-effective and timely inventory management and asset visibility throughout the supply chain,” said Omar Maden, chief executive officer of Maden Technologies.

In March the Army awarded contracts for ultra-high-frequency tags, referred to as Group 1. Then in May the service awarded contracts for fixed and transportable RFID readers, referred to as Group 2. The service still needs to award deals for 96-bit printers, referred to as Group 3, and for multiprotocol handheld readers, or Group 5.

DOD has mandated that all the department’s suppliers use RFID tags on their shipments by 2007.