Three years of work by a small Harmar business has earned top marks from military leaders.
Navy officials last week gave their OK to a wireless inventory tracking system developed by Inteligistics Inc., a 5-year-old company headed by Rao Mandava of Fox Chapel.
The system draws on wireless radio-frequency technology similar to that used in E-ZPass highway turnpike systems.
"The advantage of our product is that it can convert any closed storage (regardless) of size into a 'warehouse in motion,' " said Mandava, 65, a retired Westinghouse Electric Co. engineer. "There are no wires hanging and the unit can be transferred when not in use."
Called the Dynamic Smart Box, the system allows people to know what is inside a sealed container, monitor the interior temperature and humidity, and keep track of what is being removed, said Gopi Mandava, Inteligistics' vice president and Rao Mandava's nephew.
In 2005 Inteligistics was one of several businesses chosen by the Office of Naval Research to develop prototypes to track equipment that could be transported in 20-foot shipping containers, Gopi Mandava said.
Inteligistics' prototype was selected to receive a $1 million grant to proceed to a second phase of development. The final result was demonstrated to officials from the Navy Medical Logistics Command.
"We have been impressed by what the technology can do," said Thomas Lippert, the command's integrated logistics systems coordinator, at the demonstration Jan. 9 in a cargo warehouse at Pittsburgh International Airport.
Navy ships set sail with hundreds of containers aboard, and attaching a paper invoice to a container's exterior is not practical.
"An average Navy hospital uses 17,000 items," Lippert said. "When I deploy, I have to know what is there and when it's there."
Supply workers use a wireless device as a kind of "scratch pad" to indicate what items have been removed from the containers, Gopi Mandava said.
While approved for naval use, Inteligistics has not received a contract. The firm is also presenting the concept to potential commercial customers.
Inteligistics employs about 10 people, including subcontractors, at offices at the University of Pittsburgh Applied Research Center, or U-PARC, in Harmar.
