Innovative uses for RFID

Loyalty Cards: While the company is only developing their use of the technology, one of their bigger ideas revolves around loyalty cards with RFID tags on them. The readers would then alert the company when someone with a loyalty card enters the store, and the company could display certain products that fit their past buying history on screens in the store. RFID technology certainly provides the capability to analyze the customer and to cater to their needs with automation.
Going Paperless: the innovative uses for RFID are endless, but an apparent theme visible in the uses presented is sustainability. RFID tags are part of the future due to their green capability, helping eradicate the use of paper through automation and integration with paperless processes. In the warehouse, as companies continue to shift toward only electronic business procedures, RFID continues to aid the mobile transformation.
Process Monitoring (Tree-Growth): Tree-growers in Hawaii even use RFID to monitor their stocks of types of trees, tracking the lineage of the trees to ensure healthier growing habits. The real-time data can be analyzed to provide the best environment possible for trees to grow in. With RFID to take all growing conditions into account as factors, they can choose the best time and location to plant trees.
Forest Monitoring (Temperature-Indicating Labels): RFID can even be used to track forest fires with temperature sensors or to save endangered species by tagging animals. Most fires take one hour to be reported, and by that point, they are usually far out of control. RFID temperature sensors can detect a fire within minutes and alert firefighters quickly for a response that can stop the fire before it grows too much.
Records Management: As traditional barcode methods for tracking files becomes growingly incompatible with new security and risk mitigation applications, RFID emerges as the leader of the industry. RFID technology provides cost-effective validation and visibility on inventory, giving any business leader greater background to aid in decision making. All the data provided by RFID not only leads to labor savings and higher efficiency, but the opportunity for analysis of current processes, and thus improvement of these processes.
Child Tracking: Never lose your kids at a theme park again, with RFID tracking. With RFID, a family could instantly pinpoint the location of any family member whenever a parent or child swipes their wristband at kiosks around the park. The kids won’t even have to carry cash, letting parents set a spending limit and children simply swipe their wristbands to buy food or goods. The technology may seem too invasive, but it is definitely being proven useful.
Global Traceability: RFID gives any company the ability to track an item from a single point to multiple destinations. If a component of a whole product is assembled in Tucson, then another component made in Texas, then to Europe, then to California, RFID tags will provide constant visibility of this process, giving automatic location and status of the item, no matter where it is in the globe.
Cattle Movement and Analysis: RFID tags on cattle let the company analyze the movement patterns of cattle. By doing so, it was very easy to tell when something was wrong with a cow because it would not move in the normal patterns as illustrated by the RFID tracking.
Automated Gate Opening: By placing an RFID tag on the windshield of a car, it can make a gated neighborhood or secure area open, immediately upon entering through the RFID reader zone. For a family in a gated neighborhood, this removes the annoyance of gate codes upon every entrance to the neighborhood, but still provides the security they enjoy.
Contactless Coupons: So far only implemented in Japan, contactless coupons requires downloading an app that allows customers to choose their meals, redeem coupons, and even pay via mobile phone. The transactions occur by placing the phone near the RFID reader at the register.
Ski Lift Usage: Members at a ski resort are given RFID badges. The ski lift then tracks how many times each user goes up and down the ski lift for tracking and data purposes.
Museum Attractions: RFID can be used at a museum in order to see which exhibits are visited the most. By collecting and analyzing data on traffic to each location, the museum could then determine which exhibits are the most popular, and rearrange their placement accordingly.