So what exactly is the deal with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)? Is it an over-hyped technology that the manufacturing community is getting sucked into? Or is it something that can honestly and truly fill in the visibility gaps across supply chains and security initiatives? Whatever the case may be, RFID is set to explode…again. Is this latest round of lofty revenue predictions full of hot air or an accurate glimpse of growth potential?

Thankfully, the nagging questions above will be answered by the articles below. Let's kick things off with this interesting bit of info from Outsourcing Pharma. They're claiming that the market for RFID tags in healthcare is set to explode from $90 million in 2006 to $2.1billion in 2016, driven by the item level tagging of drugs and the growing appeal of "smart packaging."

RFID guru Peter Harrop, chairman of the consultancy IDTechEx, believes the benefits in patience compliance, fighting counterfeits and managing the supply chain will quickly prevail over the technology's costs.

Harrop says the technology has already taken off for anti-counterfeiting in the U.S. with about 30 million RFID tags prevalent at the item level (in small bottles of pills) expected by end of the year. While popular drugs like Viagra are currently stemming counterfeiting problems with RFID, Harrop says "there is a difficulty or reluctance by big pharma to calculate the true cost of counterfeiting, drug theft and poor supply chain management, slow stocktaking by pharmacies, and other problems tackled by RFID."

Here's another "RFID is set to explode" piece from Wireless Insight Asia, which is predicting that active RFID systems will near some $6.78 billion in 2016, based on new research by IDTechEx.

"Active RFID will create competitive advantage in consumer goods, combat the new terrorism, other crime and threatened epidemics of disease and serve consumers and governments demanding better service, more information, food traceability and condition monitoring," the article points out. "The safety of constructions and risk of natural disasters will be monitored by Ubiquitous Sensor Networks (USN), usually as a form of active RFID, and they will assist and monitor the increasing numbers of elderly and disabled."

And it looks like the RFID market is set to exceed $14 billion in life sciences, according to a new report released by Health Industry Insights, as seen in this RFID Journal article.

The study shows that "e-pedigrees, tracking and tracing biospecimens, electronic data capture of clinical information and other applications will drive growth over the next three years," according to the article.

Studies and predictions are one thing but real-world innovation within the RFID community is another. That's why this news from RFID Update, about the design of an RFID-enabled plastic pallet pool, is so promising.

According to the RFID Update piece:

iGPS will manage a pool of 48" x 40" plastic pallets for grocery, beverage, home improvement, pharmaceutical and consumer electronics customers. Internally, the RFID tags will be used to track the pallets throughout the shipping and return process to prevent loss and theft -- costly problems in the pallet industry. If a pallet is not read for a certain number of days, an alert will be sent to iGPS' asset protection staff to investigate. Customers will also be able to use the tracking data in their own supply chains. The pallets could be used to help generate advanced shipping notices, for example, or to aid in recalls.

Xterprise will provide Electronic Product Code (EPC) RFID tags based on the EPC Reusable Transport Item tag data format.

"We're leveraging the source tagging experience we've gained working with Wal-Mart customers to develop a solution for the pallet manufacturer," said Dean Frew, president and CEO of Xterprise. "We'll give them an extremely granular view of how their business is running."

Will RFID give your firm a granular view of how business is running?