At the end of September, the Inspector General of the United States Department of Defense issued a report entitled “Requiring Radio Frequency Identification in Contracts for Supplies”.
The report is basically a review of progress with the large program that the DoD has put together to use RFID in an attempt to streamline the defense supply chain.
While the report acknowledges that a lot of progress has been made, it points out there are still shortcomings in the process. Some of the issues that need to be addressed are:
- Contracting Officers are failing to include the RFID mandate in contracts. Of the contracts audited, only 90% of those needing the RFID clause had it included.
- Contractors are failing to comply with the RFID clause in contracts they recieve. Only 57% of the audited contracts that needed RFID actually had RFID tags on the shipments.
To correct this, DoD is being asked to increase the rate of training for contract officers and to ensure steps are taken to enforce the RFID requirement.
You can read the complete report here.
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