TAD, which performs the maintenance and repair of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems for the US Defense Department, initially contracted with SYS-TEC to deploy the WhereNet system in late 2004 to optimize the refurbishment of the AN/TRC-170 Microwave Communications System and AN/TPS-75 Air Defense Radar System.
After extended deployment in rugged environments while supporting America’s armed forces, these communications systems are shipped to TAD, where each system is disassembled, overhauled, and tested before being shipped out to the field again.
With assemblies, subassemblies, components, and spare parts spread across the more than 1.9-million-square-foot refurbishment areas, WhereNet’s RTLS technology purportedly provides each work center with visibility of the AN/TRC-170 and AN/TPS-75 system’s work in process.
In January 2006, TAD expanded its use of the WhereNet system to locate parts and optimize the refurbishment of the US army’s Firefinder radar system, which detects and tracks enemy mortar and artillery shells and has seen heavy use in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition to tracking work in process, the Firefinder team uses data captured by WhereNet to help ‘lean out’ their processes and improve production.
Leveraging a single wireless infrastructure that consists of WhereLAN locating sensors and WherePort devices, TAD has also expanded use of the WhereNet system to track hundreds of additional components associated with several additional communications-electronics systems.
A Naval Postgraduate School paper entitled ‘RTLS and the Sources of Cost Savings: A Study of How the Implementation of Real Time Location Systems into Key Business Processes Leads to Realized Cost Savings, and What This Means for the Department of Defense’, completed in June 2006, stated that the WhereNet RTLS, alongside ongoing lean business processes, will yield annual savings of nearly $8 million for fiscal year 2006.
