SENSOR-BASED INVENTORY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The Army manages a variety of equipment. Due to the different classification of equipment, numerous stores are essential in the same location. This necessitates the requirement of store personnel for daily operations. Inventory statuses and transactions are updated manually. Thus, stock taking and transaction tracking is time consuming and subjected to human errors.

DSTA seeks technological solutions to digitalise and automate the military store functions, realising a smart, unmanned store where inventory status and transactions can be tracked and updated timely with less dependencies on the store personnel.

Store personnel are required in all functions of the store:

• Opening/Closing the store
• Checking inventory status and replenishment
• Issuing of equipment
• Tracking return of equipment
• Sending of equipment for maintenance
• Update inventory records

With the reduction of manpower foreseen in future, a smart, unmanned store is envisaged to transform the existing inventory processes. At present, there are watchful store personnel ensuring there is no retrieval of secured equipment by unauthorised personnel. With an unmanned concept, there remains a need for more robust mechanism to manage secured equipment in the store.

The basic requirements for the solution are as follows:

• Solution to enable user to request indent/loan, check equipment availability and approve requests.
• Solution to grant access control based on transaction approvals and some form of digital ID.
• Solution to identify required equipment for transaction and indicate equipment within store to facilitate self-retrieval by user.
• Solution to track equipment retrieved by the user and tag to his account automatically based on the approved requests and flag out incorrect equipment, upon the exit of user.
• Solution to safeguard secured equipment for retrieval and departure only by authorised user (pre-assigned in the system).

Additional Requirements:

• Solution to have multiple means to track and verify secured equipment’s presence (e.g. Computer Vision) within the store, deterring the possibility of spoofing the primary tracking mechanism.
• Solution to improvise existing shelves to enable automatic inventory tracking within each rack and have indications for item retrieval/return by the user.
• Solution may aid in tracking the utilisation rate of certain equipment to facilitate scheduling of preventive maintenance.

This Request for Proposal (RFP) seeks technically feasible concepts from technology solution vendors to enable the concept of an unmanned store, with the capability to verify inventory movement in/out of the store and update inventory in near real-time.

• Testbed stores involve two stores, one covering general/ controlled equipment and the other on secured equipment. 
• Testbed location is within an Army Camp.
• Functional prototype to be fulfilled by: 1 Nov 2018