Employees at tomato and cucumber producer Eurofresh Farms have increased their productivity by between 200 and 250 percent thanks to an RFID-based solution that helps the company track the exact amount of work performed by each staff member, and then compensate that individual accordingly.

Sissy's Log Cabin, a jewelry retailer in Arkansas, has been employing an RFID-based solution for the past five years at its stores in Pine Bluff and Little Rock, in order to more accurately and quickly inventory the trays of watches, gems and fine jewelry that it displays and sells. Now, having opened a new store this year in Jonesboro, the company is preparing to expand the system, within the next 12 months, to include that location as well.

Zebra Technologies has put its own real-time location system (RTLS) technology to work at two of its warehouses - one in Vernon Hills, Ill., and a second in Heerenveen, the Netherlands. The solution saves time employees previously spent locating the proper place for loads of picked goods (approximately three minutes per load), says Gary Meekma, Zebra's senior manager of warehouse operations, while also reducing the amount of space required to stage each load by about 40 percent.

When industrial or construction companies employ radio frequency identification on assets and equipment to manage safety or inventory, tag placement can be a challenging task. For example, tags must be welded, wired or screwed onto such items as lift equipment, storage tanks and steel baskets, in the hope that they will not be broken or removed in the rugged environment they inhabit. And although tags can be built into an asset, thereby protecting them from the outside environment, that increases manufacturing time and cost.

In the past, when employees at T-Mobile Austria's stores began each work day, one of the first tasks performed involved updating prices and other product details. Workers printed and cut out paper labels, both before store hours and again during lunch breaks. Thanks to the installation of RFID-based electronic shelf labels from ZBD Solutions, the staff has reduced that labor time by approximately 40 percent.

While many retailers are receiving merchandise with RFID tags attached by their suppliers, others are still daunted by the prospect of employing radio frequency identification for inventory-tracking purposes. Many RFID deployments include the installation of one or more fixed readers, as well as software and integration services.

Cybra, a barcode and RFID software provider, has announced the results of a survey illustrating that the use of radio frequency identification has increased significantly during the past four years. Specifically, the number of responding companies that indicated they were using the technology rose by 157 percent since a similar survey carried out in 2008. The study was conducted with 153 businesses, about half of which were Cybra customers.

Acute-care facility New York Hospital Queens, located in the Flushing section of New York City, is piloting radio frequency identification technology to help it manage its inventory of medical devices and consumables, including stents, catheters and filters used within its interventional radiology unit.

AL-KO, a German producer of industrial air conditioners for airport hangars and other spaces, is employing a radio frequency identification solution to plan its production more precisely, by tracking the movements of parts between two production sites located 550 kilometers (342 miles) apart.

Idealcombi has reduced the time required to produce a custom window or door down to about one minute, using EPC Gen 2 passive UHF tags to automatically adjust the settings on its manufacturing equipment.