RFID technology has undergone rapid evolution and is now widely recognized as a mature technology. Despite this, many professionals and researchers still lack a comprehensive understanding of how RFID functions, its integration into logistics operations, and its potential future applications. This updated edition aims to bridge these knowledge gaps by providing a detailed overview of RFID history, current applications, and future research directions. Additionally, it introduces a Logistics RFID model developed by the lead author to facilitate the integration of RFID technology into supply chain operations.

RFID in Logistics: A Practical Introduction, Second Edition offers businesses and other relevant entities an authoritative, step‑by‑step guide to implementing and utilizing RFID communications technology. This book explores various RFID applications in entertainment, credit devices, wireless communications, healthcare, and libraries. It covers both active and passive system components, testing models, and best practices for integrating RFID technology into supply chain management. This new edition provides an update on RFID history, system design mandates, supply chain planning, reshoring in the United States, manufacturing operations at the tactical level, challenges for automation, ESG standards, global sourcing, and more.

This book aims to educate professionals, students, and academia on the use of RFID in supply chain planning and logistics. It also serves as a valuable resource for industry and government personnel, contractors, individuals, and corporate managers seeking to enhance productivity.

Erick C. Jones, Sr., Ph.D., P.E., has held senior leadership roles spanning academia, federal service, standards development, and industry since the publication of the first edition of RFID in Logistics in 2008, with a continued focus on RFID, supply chain systems, and engineering governance.

In 2011, Dr. Jones founded the RFID and Auto‑ID (RAID) Laboratories at The University of Texas at Arlington, where he also served as the George and Elizabeth Pickett Professor and as the Deputy Director of the Security Advances Via Nanotechnologies (SAVANT) Center. His academic administrative service includes appointments as Associate Dean at UT Arlington and later as the Dean of Engineering at the University of Nevada.

Dr. Jones has served in multiple federal leadership roles, including Program Director at the National Science Foundation, supporting Engineering Research Centers and the Graduate Research Fellowship Program, and later as a Jefferson Science Fellow with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He subsequently served as Senior Science Policy advisor at the U.S. Department of State, where his portfolio focused on U.S. and allied supply chain resilience.

He has advised and graduated over a dozen doctoral students, authored several academic texts, and has been extensively published in peer‑reviewed and professional venues spanning supply chain systems, quality engineering, and technology policy. Most recently, he authored ReShore, drawing on insights from his federal service during the COVID‑19 pandemic to examine strategies for strengthening resilient and domestically anchored supply chains.

Dr. Jones currently serves as the President of the International Standards Board of the International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA), is a business partner at Tompkins Ventures, and holds an academic appointment as Sloan Research Professor at Prairie View A&M University, a member of the Texas A&M University System. In 2020, he transitioned leadership of the RFID‑focused RAID Laboratories to his co‑author, Dr. Jones, Jr.

Christopher Chung, Ph.D., P.E., has continued his academic and professional career at the intersection of industrial engineering, simulation, and engineering management since the first edition of RFID in Logistics. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Houston, where his
teaching and research focus on simulation modeling, engineering management, and computer‑based industrial systems.

Dr. Chung’s research has been supported by federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Coast Guard, as well as a number of industrial organizations. His scholarly work has appeared in several journals, and he is the author of Simulation Modeling Handbook:
A Practical Approach (Routledge, 2003).

In addition to his academic career, Dr. Chung brings industry experience as a manufacturing quality engineer with the Michelin Tire Corporation and prior military service as a U.S. Army EOD bomb disposal officer. He also holds a U.S. Coast Guard 50‑ton Master’s Captain license. He earned his Bachelor of Engineering Science degree from Johns Hopkins University and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pittsburgh.

Erick C. Jones, Jr., Ph.D., P.E., is an Assistant Professor of Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington and director of the RFID and Auto‑ID Deployment (RAID) Laboratory — one of the most comprehensively equipped RFID research facilities in the country. His research deploys Radio Frequency Identification and automatic identification technologies across high‑stakes environments — energy, healthcare, public health logistics, aerospace, and law enforcement. He treats infrastructure as three inseparable layers — physical systems that move things, digital systems that make those movements visible, and institutional systems that determine what gets tracked and who benefits. RFID is the technology that bridges the first two: it turns physical presence into digital signal, and his lab builds the analytics and deployment frameworks that make that signal actionable.

The RAID Lab portfolio spans a full arc of RFID in medicine: pharmaceutical supply chain tracking from manufacturer to patient to prevent diversion and counterfeiting; smart pill research for ingestible, biocompatible RFID sensors capable of monitoring internal conditions in vivo; RFID systems preventing retained surgical
instruments; RTLS patient and medication tracking using smart shelves, wristbands, and hospital bedding; and materials tracking for the International Space Station.

He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering (Petroleum minor) from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from UT Austin, and was an NSF NRT, DOE FACES, GEM, and Mickey Leland Energy Fellow. He has worked in oil and gas and engineering design — industries where
tracking and managing equipment is essential not only for profits but for worker health and safety. He is a native Texan who has traveled all habitable continents with only a backpack.