Jun 14, 2007This article was originally published by RFID Update.
June 14, 2007—Technology services and solutions giant Unisys today announced it has been awarded a follow-on contract by the US Department of Defense to continue working on RFID-enabled visibility across the military's supply chain. The contract represents an extension to the RFID work Unisys has done for the DoD for 13 years.
Not to be confused with the DoD's highly publicized passive RFID mandate initiative, the Unisys project uses active RFID technology to track as much as 125,000 shipments every week. The shipments include everything from ammunition to rations to medical supplies to vehicles to vehicle parts. Both fixed and handheld RFID readers are deployed. The data on each active tag is replicated across five servers to provide decision-makers worldwide with the same information. The tracking spans all modes of military transportation, including truck, air, ship, and rail.
The 13-year program is much older than the DoD's much more recent RFID mandate, issued in late 2003. A Unisys spokesperson noted to RFID Update that the Unisys program was established as an RFID deployment prototype, and was therefore influential in establishing the mandate.
The new contract's terms call for one base year, followed by three options to extend for an additional year. Assuming the DoD continues to order time and materials at the current rate, each year would be worth approximately $28 million. If it exercises the three annual extensions, the total contract value could reach $112 million. The contact also comes with carrot-and-stick incentives; Unisys will earn additional fees if it meets certain performance metrics, or penalized if it does not.
