Curt Smith, director of application technologies at BP PLC, said the London-based company has seen a 15 percent increase in its retail sales of 5-quart motor oil containers at Wal-Mart stores in Texas and several nearby states since it began putting passive RFID tags on the containers last year. The improved sales come from BP's ability to better ensure that shipments arrive at stores and that the products are always available on store shelves during promotions, said Smith, who works at the company's office in Warrenville, Ill.

BP has several other RFID projects in the works, including a plan to use tags in its data centers to help IT staffers keep track of servers, routers and switches. In addition, the company is in the early stages of rolling out an RFID system that eventually will be used to track the locations of about 3,000 workers at its Cherry Point refinery in the state of Washington.

The Location Aware Safety System currently tracks about 50 Cherry Point workers via badges equipped with active RFID tags that transmit location information to a network of wireless transmitters. The system is expected to be especially useful for identifying workers who don't report to safety zones during an emergency, Smith said.

At Ford Motor Co., RFID is in use or due to be rolled out at four manufacturing plants, said Ted Thuis, a business process specialist at the automaker. One application, targeted for use at two plants, tracks incoming parts-delivery trucks using active RFID tags that are attached to the vehicles, Thuis said. At another plant, passive RFID tags are temporarily attached to parts in order to track inventories. At the fourth facility, tags are hung from the rearview mirrors of newly built trucks to track their movements through portions of the supply chain.

Thuis declined to discuss Ford's costs but said his team faces management pressure to show a return on investment. He cited a list of benefits that the RFID technology is helping to provide, including increased supply-chain velocity, product-quality improvements and the ability to use lean manufacturing techniques.