Providing several real-world examples of RFID-enabled business practices and the power of RFID, sensors and other locationing technologies, Amy Rogers Nazarov has written an article titled "The Internet of Things" for Internet Evolution - a CMP Technology publication and sister site of InformationWeek.  This article describes the many benefits provided by RFID across a variety of applications, along with several realistic challenges and cautions regarding issues such as privacy and data collection. 

ThingMagic is proud to have several customer deployments cited in this article: Tomorrow's Mother (now TM Apparel) is using RFID to improve visibility into its supply chain, Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center has deployed both active and UHF passive RFID for patient and high-value asset tracking, and Ford Motor Company's work with ThingMagic and tool maker DeWALT to develop Tool Link - an RFID-enabled tool tracking solution available to the consumer market today.

A key thread throughout this article is the importance of data sharing and intelligence generation.  Each RFID deployment has its own network requirements and information sharing opportunities, making it critical for users to identify the business process improvements they are targeting.  Managing an inventory of maternity clothing, prepping patients for surgery and locating a missing tool may seem very different on the surface, but applying RFID to each of these activities can result in significant productivity benefits if approached with the right planning and thoughtful decisions on how to best leverage the resulting data.

This article has also been published as a special 16-page handbook insert in the print issue of InformationWeek.  Case studies on the ThingMagic customers referenced in the article are available on our Case Studies web page.