USING RF ID TECHNOLOGY TO TRACK MATERIALS

The year 2007 was a turning point in the use of RF ID at a weapons complex. Pantex is the first weapons complex to test an RF ID system in a limited security area. The RF ID project focuses on the tracking and control of tooling. The needs of this project revolve around common problems in the areas of tool tracking and inventory. Tracking and inventory processes have historically relied upon human data entry and hand written documentation of tool movements resulting in a multitude of data errors. The responsibility for conducting these traditional tooling tracking activities also takes a great deal of time away from operational work activities in order to meet the plant’s electronic tool tracking expectations. Previous solutions have required additional efforts and expenditures of time by personnel in the production areas, have made the tool tracking and inventory processes more tedious and time consuming, and have failed to effectively track and inventory the tooling in the existing system. Each of these efforts continued to rely upon manual data collection and entry to solve data discrepancies. The intent of the RF ID tracking project is to demonstrate the capabilities of an RF ID system, as well as the potential reductions that use of such a system could have in human data interaction requirements. In addition, this project is expected to demonstrate a great savings of time and effort in tooling tracking and inventory processes, as well as a more efficient method of ensuring that the required tools are present and available for operations. The next phase planned for FY08 is a multi-location tooling tracking process between three or more locations.