Book excerpt: In today's hyper-competitive business climate, organizations are always under pressure to adapt to new technological trends or "hot" business process models. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is one such trend that promises to revolutionize logistical systems and provide total-lifecycle tracking of products. However, blindly adopting RFID technology without thoroughly considering its impact is just as dangerous as not adopting it at all. Based on the author's experience testing and implementing RFID technology in both industrial and military cases, RFID Metrics: Decision Making Tools for Today's Supply Chains explains how to evaluate the need for this technology. The author focuses on the problems RFID is meant to solve, if such problems exist in your organization, and the metrics you can use to make effective decisions. After establishing what RFID is and how it fits into the systems concept, the book discusses current RFID applications around the world, reveals key metrics for decision making as well as how to develop new metrics unique to RFID, demonstrates a war game for exploring RFID, and presents statistical methods for analyzing the data collected from the war games or gathered during implementation. While other books focus on the nuts and bolts of the technology, RFID Metrics is the first book to outline a detailed method for analyzing and deciding if RFID is right for your organization.