Engineering company Process Systems Engineering (PSE) is marketing a near field communication (NFC) RFID label it developed this year that will identify safety-instrumented system devices at industrial locations, as well as track each device's maintenance and calibration history.

Retail and supply chain technology company SML plans to open its sixth RFID solution innovation center in 2017, and to further its pop-up store deployments in an effort to educate customers about its radio frequency identification products. The firm opened a center in Texas in August of this year, followed by another in China in October, and a third in Germany this month.

Finnish technologies company Valmet Technologies is launching a radio frequency identification system to track the use and replacement of cloth filters for its customers, including mining, paper and energy companies.

Olive oil producers in the Italian region of Tuscany are adopting an RFID-enabled service designed to better inform customers about the finer details of their products. Brands such as Buonamici, La Ranocchiaia, SPO and Il Cavallino are integrating SpeedTap passive RFID tags created by Thin Film Electronics (Thinfilm) into the labels of their olive oil bottles.

Amcor Rigid Plastics, a division of Australia-based packaging company Amcor, has announced the release of an RFID-integrated pill-dispensing solution. The battery-powered system, known as the S.M.R.T bottle (the initials stand for separate, monitor, release and track), has a clock-calendar function that registers and stores the time, date and number of each dose taken. Smartphones equipped with near field communication (NFC) functionality can then read, display and transmit the information

The quality of any healthcare laboratory - whether it's servicing the biomedical, clinical trial and research, diagnostic or pharmaceutical community - depends on its ability to provide accurate, precise and timely results. In recent years, some labs say they have begun using RFID to automate manual processes to track human specimens and other samples, preventing loss and misidentification, assuring chain of custody, enabling quick retrieval when needed and facilitating compliance with government regulations.

Fashion retailer River Island is rolling out a radio frequency identification tool at all 280 of the stores it owns and operates. The retailer says it will track all of the garments it sells in the stores, which are located in United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium, using tags applied by suppliers.