Quality, meet RFID; RFID, meet quality. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) will be an ever larger force in the quality industry, according to a newly released report. Many retail operations (chief among them Wal-Mart) mandate the use of RFID tags to reduce out-of-stocks and maintain appropriate inventory levels, and research firm Regan, Jacob & Sydney found adoption of the technology as a quality-assurance tool. For example, automotive manufacturing organizations have used RFID chips to replace their paper-based, paint-process production requirements, resulting in better production quality and reduced rework.

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