DLA Distribution San Joaquin freight tagged during Turbo Vision in-transit visibility testing

Fourteen outgoing sea van containers and the materiel within them were fitted with satellite tags at Defense Logistics Agency Distribution San Joaquin Sept. 15-17 as part of the Operation Turbo Vision in-transit visibility testing exercise. This ongoing process is a continuation of Operation Turbo Fusion, an earlier phase of the exercise, which took place earlier this year.

Operation Turbo Vision utilizes the requisition and movement of DLA assets from multiple locations within the continental United States to various global stockage locations in order to evaluate commercial industry and government-owned asset visibility and in-transit visibility technologies, and to assess their utility to answer critical operational questions relative to asset visibility.

"The point of all of this is to test the communication capabilities when it comes to asset visibility within the Department of War," explained Kenny Shelton, logistics management specialist, U.S. Transportation Command. "It's all about not losing touch with where people's stuff is."

The three-day tagging process will be followed soon by a similar procedure at DLA Distribution Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. The San Joaquin materiel, destined for DLA Distribution Japan in Okinawa, and the Susquehanna freight, which is headed to DLA Distribution Europe in Germersheim, Germany, is fitted with the tags, which receive signals via Global Positioning System satellites. The tags are expected to provide real-time location information for the cargo as it travels from opposite U.S. coasts to its respective final destinations.

Representatives from five different vendors attached their tags, which vary in design from small plastic boxes that are screwed onto pallets to larger devices affixed to the outside of the containers with heavy-duty magnets. The tags will be removed from the freight at their destination points, with a report of the exercise's findings published afterward.

The exercise is designed to provide information to assist DLA and USTRANSCOM determine if the tagging procedures and the in-transit visibility should be implemented in the shipping process.

"One thing we're looking at is how manual it is versus how automated it is," said Ashley Baker, procurement analyst, USTRANSCOM. "We're really thinking of the troops out in the field as we're looking at these processes."