Lackland Air Force Base Chute Assessment: Data Collection and Analysis

摘要

The Defense Logistics Agency's (DLA's) Customer Driven Uniform Manufacturing (CDUM) program sponsors research and development projects related to clothing and textiles. A recent CDUM project applied radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology to the storage and distribution of airman battle uniforms (ABUs) and other recruit clothing at Lackland Air Force Base's Clothing Initial Issue Point (CIIP). The CIIP manages the issuing of initial ABUs, an activity referred to as 'first issue,' and uses RFID technology to facilitate its first-issue activities and associated inventory management. At Lackland, personnel attach item-level RFID tags to most first-issue apparel items and use a chute RFID reader (chute) to track and control the distribution of those items. As part of our ongoing support of the CDUM program, an LMI team visited the CIIP to measure chute effectiveness in a controlled environment and during first-issue operations. We tested the chute in two ways. First, after identifying the chute characteristics that could cause variations in the chute performance, we tested those characteristics in a controlled environment. Then, we tested the chute during a CIIP first issue to observe and measure actual chute performance. During a 2-day period, we tested two chute design parameters and three process-related parameters. Our findings from those tests are summarized in this report. Our observations of chute read performance during trainee first-issue process yielded the following results: (1) the chute misread 181 item-level RFID tags out of 29,656, indicating it was effective more than 99 percent of the time; and (2) the chute correctly flagged 264 non- chute read errors (i.e., errors associated with issue, tagging, databases, or damaged tags).