Six months from start to finish: Horizon Lines' team gets RFID up and running in Alaska.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa
• Position: ALASKA BUSINESS MONTHLY'S 2007 TRANSPORTATION SECTION

Once a decision is made to implement a new technology, it often takes a company years before the actual concept comes to fruition. In the case of Horizon Lines, however, team members were given six months to design, deploy and compile data from the company's new Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) solution.

"Our corporate goal was to have the system in place by the end of the third quarter," said Ken Privratsky, company vice president and general manager of Horizon Lines, of the project that began April 4. "When you have a unique and difficult project, it often leads to people dragging their feet. But the team of Kenny Gill, Greg Skinner and Eliseo Barrera approached the task aggressively and proved what they could do. They are the heroes here-they got the project done."

SIX MONTH RECORD

And that was no small undertaking. In just six months, Horizon Lines' team members from Anchorage, Tacoma and Dallas conducted a thorough vendor assessment; completed several site visits to evaluate existing active RFID offerings; and down-selected to a specific vendor, IDENTEC SOLUTIONS INC. They also began deployment activities, including site assessments and field testing of equipment.

"In the first six weeks, Marc Garcia and Greg Skinner dug into the technology, determining what we needed for our intermodal solution," explained Kodiak Terminal Manager Kenny Gill, who acted as the project manager on the business side. "We needed something that would read at 65 mph on the highway from roughly 100 meters, so we couldn't use passive or semi-passive technology. Once they determined the product we needed, they secured the technology and vendor, and began working with them on lead times."

In May, the procurement process was begun, leaving the team four months to tag the Horizon Lines' fleet and implement the necessary hooks into the existing Horizon operational and customer-facing applications. During this time, the team also met with Safeway to elicit their interest in participating in the pilot project. "By the time Greg was halfway through the presentation, Safeway had jumped on board," said Gill.

At the same time, Horizon Line's Manager of Technology Sales and Service, Eliseo Barrera, was meeting with the Alaska Department of Transportation. "Eliseo worked with DOT to determine what sites we should use from an infrastructure perspective," said Gill. "Our goal was to break a six-hour trip from the Port of Anchorage to a Safeway location in North Pole into...