IBM RFID Solutions

What can Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) do for your business? From manufacturing facilities to vehicles, to airport compounds, store shelves and toll booths, RFID technology is steadily (and inevitably) transforming how the world does business. RFID capabilities find broad application cutting across multiple business process areas: Manufacturing | Health Care | Security & Access Control | New Applications

In the phenomena where Middle East countries are encouraging foreign investment as well as tourism, border security has to walk a fine line: nations need to be open enough to keep supply chains moving, but guarded enough to keep danger at bay. The Strategic Council on Security Technology, a group of private-sector and government supply-chain experts, is rolling out an initiative to tag shipping containers and allow companies and governments to share the resulting RFID data—so border security can track containers, detect tampering and get advance notice of incoming shipments, to help move goods through customs. From the standpoint of an on demand business, voluntarily sharing data with government agencies is no different from opening up the enterprise to any other trusted partner: with the right processes and agreements in place, every party can benefit, and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Airbus and Boeing are collaborating with the Air Transport Association to set guidelines for RFID use in the airline industry. The technology will, of course, be used for predictable applications like sorting baggage for travellers and tracking spare parts during manufacturing and maintenance. It will also be used by customer-service personnel, like flight crews and caterers, to track the tools they need to do their job. This includes expensive and necessary equipment like food trolleys—items that tend to get lost in transport, are difficult to replace and can cause unnecessary flight delays when they're misplaced. The result is tighter inventory control for the airlines, and fewer hours spent waiting on runways for the passengers.