In other cases, using RFID does make sense for Dow. The company is testing active tags placed over the fastener that holds each shipping container closed; the tags connect to an internal sensor and clock. The combination lets Dow track environmental conditions such as temperature or moisture, so a log is stored on the tag—essentially, a shipment e-pedigree. That log can be checked as the container passes through various points on its journey, giving early alerts to possible problems, Asiala says.

The same tag is also used in a more traditional inventory management application: to locate and redirect a container in transit, for instance, when a customer cancels an order but a different customer wants the materials. When the container enters a port, the shipping firms can find the affected container and move it to a new ship destined for the new customer, rather than ship it back to its origin first, as had been standard practice, Asiala says.

Most experimentation today in using RFID beyond inventory management is happening in the medical industry, notes Michael Liard, a research director at ABI Research. Like Dow's Kepler, hospital CIOs have discovered that RFID can sometimes be a useful tactical weapon to support a larger strategic need.

Reducing medication errors is a common goal at hospitals. That's why the Friedrich Schiller University Hospital in Jena, Germany, is testing the use of RFID tags on patients' ID bracelets, nurses' ID badges, and drugs and drug containers. Before a nurse administers a drug, she scans herself, the patient and the drug. A software system checks the patient and drug IDs against the pharmacy instructions to make sure there are no medication errors. The drug type and amount, as well as the time of delivery and the ID of the nurse who administered it, are all logged, so the hospital can quickly analyze medication history in case of a problem, says vice CIO Martin Specht.

While the hospital could use bar codes to accomplish the same goal, it decided to test an RFID-based system from SAP and Intel because Specht envisions using a similar approach to track blood products—where RFID-sensor combinations could also monitor temperature to ensure blood does not get spoiled before use. It made sense to start with an RFID infrastructure given the likely future uses, he says.

Rich Schaeffer, vice president and CIO of St. Clair Hospital in Pittsburgh, started with a bar code–based system for tracking and validating medication dispensing. But nurses were convinced the scanning of their ID, patient bracelet and drug package container slowed them down, even though Schaeffer's studies showed otherwise. So he added RFID tags to patient bracelets and nurses' IDs (at the cost of about $1 each) so nurses could scan faster with their handheld readers. But he kept bar codes on the medications, mainly to save costs—"it's too costly given the number of tags we'd need," he says—and because the robotic drug dispensary system supports only bar codes. To support both bar codes and RFID tags, he uses a dual-technology reader from Socket Mobile.