Those familiar with the powers of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) understand all too well that the technology has got quite a few technical snafus to work out before it is truly accepted and respected as a bona fide IT player. Frankly, there's been far too much bellyaching about RFID's shortcomings, from both the vendors designing RFID and the manufacturers being forced to deploy it throughout their supply chains. That's why it's so refreshing to come across some positive news for a change that truly shows the power and flexibility of RFID.

First up is Goodyear Tires. The company said it is using RFID to track and manage its tires at all three NASCAR top series in 2006, including the Nextel Cup Series, Busch Series and Craftsman Truck Series. With 43 cars at each Nextel Cup race and each car using about 10 sets of tires per race, the task of tracking all of the tires can be challenging and time consuming. Goodyear wants to track the nearly 2,000 tires from manufacturing through distribution to the teams, and then to the final disposition of the tires after each race. The decision to fully deploy the Psion Teklogix RFID solution at all 2006 races follows Goodyear's successful testing session at the Homestead-Miami Speedway during the 2005 season finale of the Craftsman Truck Series.

"We're excited to be working with Psion Teklogix on our RFID tracking solution, which is the first deployment of its kind in the racing industry," said Greg Stucker, director of race tire sales and marketing, Goodyear, from a release.

From the fast tracks of NASCAR, we speed on over to Germany where popular clothing maker Lemmi Fashion is doing some pretty stylin' things with RFID. Lemmi specializes in children's apparel and is hot and heavy over RFID hand tags, used as part of a strategic initiative to help improve its speed to market, inventory management and order accuracy.

Checkpoint Systems is supplying Lemmi's manufacturing partners in Asia and Europe with Performa 13.56 MHz RFID-enabled hangtags. The hangtags, which include a visible version of the RFID tag and a traditional bar code, contain data such as article number, size, and color. So how does it work? The tagging process begins when Lemmi's partners apply Performa RFID-enabled garment tags to items at their production sites. The goods are recorded when they are shipped from the manufacturer to Lemmi's distribution center (DC), and upon receipt at the DC. Movements within the DC are also recorded, and Lemmi reads the RFID tags a final time at the shipping area to confirm that all items required for the shipment have been packed.

A fashion statement, indeed.

Rounding out the RFID coverage is VTech, a maker of cordless phones among other things. Turns out the company's telecommunications division is the first firm in Asia Pacific to participate in the Hong Kong EPCnetwork initiative directed by EPCglobal Hong Kong. The initiative aims to bring end-to-end supply chain visibility to the Pan Pearl River Delta (PPRD) region through the use of a common, standards-based data exchange. Historically, the exchange of information between manufacturers in China, like VTech, and retailers around the world was communicated through electronic data interchange (EDI) or, in worst-case situations, via phone and fax.

Now, EPC-based RFID tags and readers and a standards-based data exchange – the EPC Information Service – allow VTech to track telecommunications products from the Dongguan factory to Wal-Mart distribution centers in the United States. Here's what Alex Kwan, senior supply chain and logistics manager, VTech Telecommunicastions had to say:

We shipped over 40 million units of telecommunication products to various major retailers in North America in the financial year 2005, thus being RFID-ready and choosing a highly robust, reliable RFID solution is a must. The RFID solution from Cisco and Intel not only provides us with better product visibility, but also improves capabilities for inventory management, while bringing VTech much closer to its customers and partners in the supply chain.

So how 'bout it folks? Will RFID bring you closer to your customers and partners?