Year
2012
Abstract
New Brunswick Laboratory (NBL) has a numerous inventory containing thousands of plutonium and uranium certified reference materials. The current manual inventory process is well established but is a lengthy process that requires significant oversight and double checking to ensure correctness. Oak Ridge National Laboratory has worked with NBL to develop and deploy a new inventory system that uses handheld computers with barcode scanners and radio frequency identification (RFID) readers, termed the Tagged Item Inventory System (TIIS). Certified reference materials are identified by labels that incorporate RFID tags and barcodes. The label printing process and RFID tag association process are integrated into the main desktop software application. Software on the handheld computers syncs with software on designated desktop machines and the NBL inventory database to provide a seamless inventory process. This process includes 1) identifying items to be inventoried, 2) downloading the current inventory information to the handheld computer, 3) using the handheld to read item and location labels, and 4) syncing the handheld computer with a designated desktop machine to analyze the results, print reports, etc. The security of this inventory software has been a major concern. Designated roles linked to authenticated logins are used to control access to the desktop software, while password protection and badge verification are used to control access to the handheld computers. The overall system design and deployment at NBL are presented. The performance of the system is also discussed with respect to a small piece of the overall inventory. Future work includes performing a full inventory at NBL with the TIIS and comparing performance, cost, and radiation exposures to the current manual inventory process.