Sometimes subassemblies are placed into reusable containers and shipped to other manufacturing facilities so they may be incorporated into other assemblies. Other times raw materials are shipped from suppliers in containers owned by the manufacturer or between manufacturing facilities within the same organization. Many times these containers have a finite life cycle or are require to be maintained after a certain number of uses.

• A smart label or encapsulated tag is affixed to a reusable container
• The outside of the tag may/may not have a visible identifier such as human readable text or barcode. The tag contains a unique identifier
• As each container is filled with product to be shipped, its identifier can be tracked as part of the ASN information. Product information may also be encoded
• Each container is returned empty to the facility and recorded by reading the RFID chip. If product information was originally encoded, it can be deleted
• The life cycle of the container can be tracked through each return and can be discarded at the end of its targeted life-cycle or scheduled for require maintenance
• No human interaction is required at read points