As humans, we don’t always take steps to improve ourselves until circumstances compel us to do so. The same can be said of businesses. If you represent a defense manufacturer or other company tasked with managing assets for the U.S. Department of Defense, you certainly welcome operational improvement. But you may not see a compelling enough reason to implement measures that might lead to enhanced business performance. Recently, A2B Tracking published a white paper detailing how mandatory compliance with new DoD regulations involving Item-Unique Identification (IUID) also serves to streamline your operations and even boost profit margins. A2B graciously allowed us to share some of the paper’s contents with you:
The Compelling Circumstance
In 2001, the U.S. Secretary of Defense issued a directive stating that all DoD assets must be accountable to meet the department’s need for clean audit readiness. Part of this is the Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness (FIAR) mandate, which calls for accountability by September 30, 2014. To this end, defense manufacturers and property managers are required to identify, mark and track assets with a machine-readable item unique identification (IUID) 2D Data Matrix barcode, on new equipment under contract. It’s not an option.
The Resulting Improvement
Fortunately, IUID is more than just a reliable compliance technology. It’s a powerful way to streamline your operations using serialized item management (SIM), and to incorporate item resource planning into your business. So, whether you need to comply with new regulations or not, an IUID system is an investment that delivers significant returns.
Because IUID takes the form of a machine-readable code, it enables automatic identification (Auto ID), which is significantly faster and eliminates human error. Plus, IUID lets you tighten controls across your entire enterprise. It not only allows you to meet DoD requirements and military identification and marking standards such as MIL-STD-130, but also gives you the ability to locate, track and maintain visibility of items throughout all your business functions:
Contracts – IUID compliance and contract fulfillment
Operations – Overall control and production management
Inventory – Fast and accurate item accountability
Logistics – Chain of custody and location awareness
Maintenance – Timely scheduling, item history and predictive failures
Security – Protection from theft, loss and counterfeit items
Property – Location, status and condition of items
Customer Service – Warranty and recall history
Accounting – Lean supply chain, elimination of duplicate orders, timely billing
The advantages of IUID are not limited to defense manufacturers. Organizations handling government furnished property (GFP) and legacy items can also get in on the IUID benefits. That’s because the DoD, which sets a threshold on the value of newly manufactured items requiring IUID labels at $5000, has issued a ruling stating that GFP items, including non-serialized items, of any value should contain an IUID mark and be reported to the DoD IUID Registry. Aside from the item management and accountability benefits this brings, organizations can now develop a much broader business perspective and strategy that uses IUID as a highly precise operational standard that can be uniformly integrated throughout all company processes.
Many companies have opted for an in-house turnkey IUID system that meets DoD regulations on audit readiness while integrating with their enterprise systems – lowering overhead and improving ROI in the process. Such systems with automatic identification hardware and cloud-based software offer a reliable, straightforward way to scan, create, print, validate and verify IUID barcodes, as well as submit data to the IUID Registry and Wide Area Workflow (WAWF) system.
Click here to read the entire white paper to learn about more benefits of an IUID system and for a checklist of questions to ask if you’re considering the move to IUID. You can also view a case scenario showing improved ROI.
*Blog credits to A2B Tracking