SBIR Phase II:Material Adjusted Signature Tags for Cradle-to-Grave Inventory Applications

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project improves inventory management.An estimated $818 billion is lost annually due to incomplete knowledge of a company’s inventory.The problem occurs because of the absence of a label at manufacturing that survives through the supply chain (retail, logistics, and end user). Currently, traditional supply chain management forces a company to add at least one new tag at each step. This project will reduce the number of tags per product, exponentially decrease waste, increase supply chain efficiency, and prevent knockoffs or counterfeits from being added to the supply chain. All of this will help businesses run more effectively, better serve customers, and enable consumers to gain detailed knowledge of their purchases.The intellectual merit of this project is development of the first commercially viable, cradle-to-grave inventory tag through optimization and scalability tasks. The innovation is a chipless inventory tag with a unique serial number for every product to provide the cradle-to-grave functionality. The underlying Material Adjusted Signature Tag (MAST) technology uses printable materials to create a unique radio frequency (RF) signal. The MAST tags will enable direct printing or application of a tag onto a product, allowing an efficient way to reliably identify, track, and attribute data to a product throughout its life. This project will improve the tag’s data potential, optimize manufacturability, and achieve greater readability. Beyond optimization and scalability milestones, this project will test the tags, readers, and manufacturing equipment in relevant environments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.