RFID technology is on the march within the Department of Defense (DOD). As of late September, 19 Defense Distribution Centers (DDCs) in 11 states had been outfitted with RFID readers and were ready to begin accepting shipments supplied with RFID tags. Many of them are already doing so, according to ODIN technologies, the company that installed the RFID hardware. (Officials from the Department of Defense did not return calls for comment prior to the publication's deadline.)
ODIN, which was awarded the $7.7 million contract only last May, says it completed the RFID rollout in just under 130 days, a record for the industry. But that doesn't mean it was easy. The rollout required extensive acceptance testing at each site before the go live was approved.
"We had to demonstrate 100-percent accuracy on read rates at the case level before we could get paid for each pOréal," says Patrick Sweeney, chief executive officer of ODIN. "Each pOréal had to read 20 different Gen 1 and Gen 2 tags on the pallet at 100-percent levels. We were required to do 10 trials of acceptance testing for each pallet. It's much more complex than Wal-Mart, which is just trying to read one pallet tag."
Now it's on to stage two. Sweeney reports that the first phase of the project called for his company to install "hundreds" of pOréals at 69 facilities within the 19 DDC sites. Phase two includes outfitting seven "OCONUS" facilities, the military's term for those located outside the continental United States. That project will begin by year's end.
Ripple effect
The effects of the DOD's RFID push are expected to ripple across industry. Gregg O'Connell, government sales director at Zebra Technologies, reports that his customers are rapidly progressing from pilot stage to actual implementations as more and more government contracts are rewritten to require that products be shipped with RFID tags.
"We have helped dozens of RFID entities within the DOD market conduct their pilots," says O'Connell. "There's been tremendous pilot activity and slowly we're seeing pilots turning to actual deployments." Sweeney adds that the DOD's RFID deployment has prompted several other large customers to boost their budgets for future RFID projects. "With the DOD fully online and Wal-Mart continuing to expand its efforts, what we're seeing is that others are definitely putting some big numbers in their budgets for RFID," he says. "We're seeing multiple seven figure deals."
As for what's ahead, O'Connell predicts that the Air Force, the Marines and the Navy will lead the government's RFID deployment effort, with the Army following on their heels. O'Connell notes that the specific goal of the Air Force is to integrate a passive RFID tracking system into its cargo movement operations system, which will allow personnel to load and unload planes much more efficiently.
For the Navy, the initial goal is to use RFID to track goods from its DCs to and from ships. The Navy, however, has faced a particular challenge in proving that RFID signals won't interfere with ammunition transported on ships. "The Navy's constraints in using passive RFID are more [restrictive] than [those of] the other agencies," O'Connell says. "One big action item for them is to prove [RFID] causes no interference with ordnance stored on Navy vessels. They've had to provide a lot of answers to questions that people in the commercial world would never [have to deal with]."
Sweeney also says he's noticed distinct differences between the government's RFID implementation strategy and private industry's, which he views as haphazard. "Wal- Mart has been a textbook example of how to publicize the technology, but their execution, processes and methodology have been [flawed]," he says. "The DOD has been a fantastic contrast to that. There's a dramatic difference between using physics and science [at the DOD] versus using trial and error."
RJW Logistics Group, a logistics solutions provider (LSP) for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, has received a “strategic investment” from Boston-based private equity firm Berkshire partners, and now plans to drive future innovations and expand its geographic reach, the Woodridge, Illinois-based company said Tuesday.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the company said that CEO Kevin Williamson and other members of RJW management will continue to be “significant investors” in the company, while private equity firm Mason Wells, which invested in RJW in 2019, will maintain a minority investment position.
RJW is an asset-based transportation, logistics, and warehousing provider, operating more than 7.3 million square feet of consolidation warehouse space in the transportation hubs of Chicago and Dallas and employing 1,900 people. RJW says it partners with over 850 CPG brands and delivers to more than 180 retailers nationwide. According to the company, its retail logistics solutions save cost, improve visibility, and achieve industry-leading On-Time, In-Full (OTIF) performance. Those improvements drive increased in-stock rates and sales, benefiting both CPG brands and their retailer partners, the firm says.
"After several years of mitigating inflation, disruption, supply shocks, conflicts, and uncertainty, we are currently in a relative period of calm," John Paitek, vice president, GEP, said in a release. "But it is very much the calm before the coming storm. This report provides procurement and supply chain leaders with a prescriptive guide to weathering the gale force headwinds of protectionism, tariffs, trade wars, regulatory pressures, uncertainty, and the AI revolution that we will face in 2025."
A report from the company released today offers predictions and strategies for the upcoming year, organized into six major predictions in GEP’s “Outlook 2025: Procurement & Supply Chain” report.
Advanced AI agents will play a key role in demand forecasting, risk monitoring, and supply chain optimization, shifting procurement's mandate from tactical to strategic. Companies should invest in the technology now to to streamline processes and enhance decision-making.
Expanded value metrics will drive decisions, as success will be measured by resilience, sustainability, and compliance… not just cost efficiency. Companies should communicate value beyond cost savings to stakeholders, and develop new KPIs.
Increasing regulatory demands will necessitate heightened supply chain transparency and accountability. So companies should strengthen supplier audits, adopt ESG tracking tools, and integrate compliance into strategic procurement decisions.
Widening tariffs and trade restrictions will force companies to reassess total cost of ownership (TCO) metrics to include geopolitical and environmental risks, as nearshoring and friendshoring attempt to balance resilience with cost.
Rising energy costs and regulatory demands will accelerate the shift to sustainable operations, pushing companies to invest in renewable energy and redesign supply chains to align with ESG commitments.
New tariffs could drive prices higher, just as inflation has come under control and interest rates are returning to near-zero levels. That means companies must continue to secure cost savings as their primary responsibility.
Freight transportation sector analysts with US Bank say they expect change on the horizon in that market for 2025, due to possible tariffs imposed by a new White House administration, the return of East and Gulf coast port strikes, and expanding freight fraud.
“All three of these merit scrutiny, and that is our promise as we roll into the new year,” the company said in a statement today.
First, US Bank said a new administration will occupy the White House and will control the House and Senate for the first time since 2016. With an announced mandate on tariffs, taxes and trade from his electoral victory, President-Elect Trump’s anticipated actions are almost certain to impact the supply chain, the bank said.
Second, a strike by longshoreman at East Coast and Gulf ports was suspended in October, but the can was only kicked until mid-January. Shipper alarm bells are already ringing, and with peak season in full swing, the West coast ports are roaring, having absorbed containers bound for the East. However, that status may not be sustainable in the event of a prolonged strike in January, US Bank said.
And third, analyst are tracking the proliferation of freight fraud, and its reverberations across the supply chain. No longer the realm of petty criminals, freight fraudsters have become increasingly sophisticated, and the financial toll of their activities in the loss of goods, and data, is expected to be in the billions, the bank estimates.
Specifically, 48% of respondents identified rising tariffs and trade barriers as their top concern, followed by supply chain disruptions at 45% and geopolitical instability at 41%. Moreover, tariffs and trade barriers ranked as the priority issue regardless of company size, as respondents at companies with less than 250 employees, 251-500, 501-1,000, 1,001-50,000 and 50,000+ employees all cited it as the most significant issue they are currently facing.
“Evolving tariffs and trade policies are one of a number of complex issues requiring organizations to build more resilience into their supply chains through compliance, technology and strategic planning,” Jackson Wood, Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes, said in a release. “With the potential for the incoming U.S. administration to impose new and additional tariffs on a wide variety of goods and countries of origin, U.S. importers may need to significantly re-engineer their sourcing strategies to mitigate potentially higher costs.”
A measure of business conditions for shippers improved in September due to lower fuel costs, looser trucking capacity, and lower freight rates, but the freight transportation forecasting firm FTR still expects readings to be weaker and closer to neutral through its two-year forecast period.
Bloomington, Indiana-based FTR is maintaining its stance that trucking conditions will improve, even though its Shippers Conditions Index (SCI) improved in September to 4.6 from a 2.9 reading in August, reaching its strongest level of the year.
“The fact that September’s index is the strongest since last December is not a sign that shippers’ market conditions are steadily improving,” Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking, said in a release.
“September and May were modest outliers this year in a market that is at least becoming more balanced. We expect that trend to continue and for SCI readings to be mostly negative to neutral in 2025 and 2026. However, markets in transition tend to be volatile, so further outliers are likely and possibly in both directions. The supply chain implications of tariffs are a wild card for 2025 especially,” he said.
The SCI tracks the changes representing four major conditions in the U.S. full-load freight market: freight demand, freight rates, fleet capacity, and fuel price. Combined into a single index, a positive score represents good, optimistic conditions, while a negative score represents bad, pessimistic conditions.