PRESS RELEASES
Alien Technology® Opens World’s Most Advanced UHF RFID Tag Manufacturing Facility in North Dakota
Alien® Manufacturing Center, Fargo to provide capacity to produce up to 10 billion low-cost, high-quality RFID tags per year
October 9, 2006, Morgan Hill, Calif. – Alien Technology Corporation today officially opened its 48,000-square foot Alien Manufacturing Center in Fargo, North Dakota, the world’s most advanced and sophisticated UHF RFID tag manufacturing facility. With the current capacity to manufacture up to 2 billion RFID tags per year, and 10 billion tags per year in the future when fully equipped, Alien’s Fargo facility represents a milestone in the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) industry’s ability to produce high volumes of affordable, high-quality tags, and will be instrumental in extending Alien’s long-standing price/performance leadership
“The wide-spread availability of low-cost RFID tags is vital to the continued rapid adoption of this truly transformative technology,” said Bob Eulau, acting CEO, Executive VP, and CFO, Alien Technology. “The result of six years of RFID manufacturing R&D and expertise, the Alien Fargo Manufacturing Center greatly enhances our ability to meet the mounting demand for affordable, high-quality tags and to help drive further RFID market growth worldwide.”
Continued Eulau, “Alien’s tag manufacturing roadmap for the future is simple: faster, cheaper and better. In this way, we will propel faster, more substantial returns on investment for Alien customers around the globe.”
Over a typical 10 year RFID project life cycle, RFID tags typically represent 70% of an end users total project expense. With its proprietary manufacturing techniques, Alien has been able to continually supply low cost RFID tags to the industry. To this end, Alien has invested heavily in developing advanced tag manufacturing technologies and processes, and has been issued more than 30 manufacturing patents to date with another 30 in process. This is in addition to Alien’s numerous RFID technology patents. Ten people, including eight PhDs, are currently employed full time in Alien’s manufacturing research and development efforts, working to define improved techniques.
Proprietary techniques for low-cost, high-volume tag production
The new facility will apply sophisticated manufacturing processes to help produce Alien’s extensive portfolio of tags optimized for a wide range of applications, including supply chain visibility, asset and baggage tracking, item level tagging, and public safety. This includes tags based on the newly announced Alien Gen2 RFID IC. These advanced processes encompass the use of an advanced Micro Electronic Mechanical System (MEMS) fab for silicon processing, and a proprietary process for removing dies from silicon wafers that enables Alien to obtain 15% to 20% more RFID chips (NanoBlock® ICs) per wafer than any competitor – a unique cost advantage and thus a key factor in Alien’s ongoing leadership.
After these chips are processed in Fargo, they are shipped in solution to Alien’s Morgan Hill, CA facilities to be packaged into “straps” via Alien’s patented FSA® (Fluidic Self Assembly) process. This revolutionary assembly technology enables efficient, cost-effective placement of very large numbers of small components across a surface in a single operation. To date, Alien has produced over 120 million straps in the FSA process. Rolls of FSA straps are then returned to Fargo for final assembly into RFID tags using Alien’s HiSAM (High Speed Strap Attached) machines, designed exclusively to package Alien FSA straps. Greatly speeding and improving the accuracy of the packaging process, each HiSAM machine produces 10 Alien RFID tags per second, or 250 million units per year – representing a substantial yield advance over conventional tag packaging methods.
“Now online, the Alien Manufacturing Center, Fargo represents the state-of-the-art in the high-volume production of RFID tags,” said Glenn Gengel, vice president of Manufacturing, Alien Technology. “The cumulative effect of Alien’s advanced manufacturing systems and proprietary techniques is the ability to provide predictable volumes of high-quality RFID tags at a very low cost. We will continue to invest selectively in assembly capacity to match market demand growth, and in technologies that will allow even greater manufacturing efficiencies going forward in order to sustain and extend our competitive advantage.”
About Alien Technology
Alien Technology provides UHF Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) products and services to customers in retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, defense, transportation and logistics, pharmaceuticals and other industries. Organizations use Alien's RFID products and services to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and security of their supply chains, logistics and asset tracking operations. Alien's products include RFID tags, RFID readers and related training and professional services. Alien's patented Fluidic Self Assembly (FSA) technology and related proprietary manufacturing processes are designed to enable the manufacture of high volume, low cost RFID tags.
Alien was founded in 1994. The company's facilities include: its corporate headquarters in Morgan Hill, CA; an RFID tag manufacturing facility in Fargo, ND; the Alien RFID Solutions Center, in the Dayton, Ohio area, and sales offices in the US, Europe and Asia. Alien is a member of EPCglobal. More information about Alien is available at www.alientechnology.com.
Alien, Alien Technology, the Alien logo, Squiggle and FSA, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Alien Technology Corporation in the United States and other countries. Copyright 2007 Alien Technology Corporation. All rights reserved.
