The University of Southern California housing office knew its housing facilities, on and off campus, had upwards of 60,000 pieces of furniture and appliances. But until the student housing office deployed a radio frequency identification system, tracking which items were at what locations, as well as which were broken, missing or due for replacement, required exhaustive manual inventories. Those inventory counts, typically conducted during summers, required the hiring of temporary workers and many hours of labor to catalog what was where.

For the past four years, Julio Cesar Lestido S.A., the official Uruguayan importer of cars and trucks manufactured by the Volkswagen Group, has been employing passive ultrahigh-frequency RFID tags to track the metal tools it uses to maintain vehicles. The company says that it is now developing a plan to utilize the technology to record each vehicle's life history, including its date of import and sales information, as well as all maintenance provided.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) is deploying a radio frequency identification technology that enables its own laboratory testing of samples from job sites, as well as inspections of precast concrete materials at the sites of suppliers, to be captured and then managed electronically.

Deere-Hitachi Construction Machinery Corp. is employing AeroScout Industrial Wi-Fi radio frequency identification tags to track the assembly of construction machinery at its facility in Kernersville, N.C.

Equipment used at a West Australian open-pit iron mine is being managed across a 40-square-mile area via active radio frequency identification tags to identify where certain equipment is located, as well as control its operation.

U.K. retailer John Lewis is preparing to launch an RFID-enabled pilot at its flagship store in London by early next month that will allow shoppers to create an image of a specific chair or sofa with the fabric covering of their choice, using toy-size pieces of furniture and swatches of fabric.

U.K.-based aerospace manufacturing and logistical services firm Daher Aerospace is managing its fleet of reusable containers via a radio frequency identification solution provided by Waer Systems Ltd.

Mutual Materials, a Pacific Northwest manufacturer and hauler of stones, bricks and other masonry products used for landscaping and construction purposes, is monitoring the locations and conditions of its vehicles via an RFID-based solution provided by electronic fleet-management technology company Zonar.