Intermec to provide RFID tags to US government
Published:11-March-2005
By BR staff writer
The US government has awarded Everett, Washington-based Intermec Technologies a blanket purchasing contract to provide passive radio frequency identification tags to support the Department of Defense and the US Coast Guard.
The contract is part of the US government's Automatic Information Technology radio frequency identification (RFID) initiative to improve efficiency and inventory asset management.
Under the terms of the agreement, Intermec will provide commercial UHF passive EPC Class 1 RFID tags. It is the first of five AIT RFID award groups resulting from a government request for proposal issued last December. Subsequent award groups, to be announced throughout the year, will select vendors to provide fixed mounted, transportable and handheld RFID readers, RFID-enabled bar code printers, software and implementation and integration services.
Intermec said the award is the latest in a 20-year partnership between the company and the US government. In 2004, Intermec became prime contractor on a five-year contract, known as AIT-III, to provide a range of automatic identification technologies. This was administered by the US army and involved the supply of mobile computing, wireless communications, data collection systems and services to all federal agencies and branches of the US Department of Defense.
RFID is designed to complement current bar code-based inventory and asset tracking systems in order to allow companies and organizations to automatically track inventory throughout an entire supply chain.
