Materials authentication is another complementary asset management application. It provides a way to detect counterfeit products and can ensure that only authorised parts and supplies are used. Many organizations in the pharmaceutical industry will use RFID to comply with FDA rules to improve the security of the drug supply chain. This includes grey market trading and product recall.

RFID has captured the attention of many leading companies today who are making significant investments of money and time to make this technology feasible in their operations. The goal, however, is to leverage internal RFID structures to capture and share real-time business information across entire enterprises and with trading partners. In other words, RFID deployments based on open, standardized EPC interfaces that enable interoperability and multi-vendor implementations may achieve the ultimate in global data sharing: total asset visibility.