Bob Winkelman
International TechneGroup Incorporated

One of the great lessons learned from the "dot com" driven surge economy was that no one can afford to ignore bottom-line profitability. No matter how attractive a new scientific or technological advance may be it is essentially worthless if it cannot be used to make someone's business more productive and profitable. Measured by that standard the field of Embedded Electronics leads all candidates as a foundation for a new and immensely profitable surge economy.

Defining Embedded Electronics
Simply put, "embedded electronics" refers to those devices that can be embedded in or on any product or component that allow communication. Embedded electronics not only store information on computer circuits, they can also perform transmit and receive functions once activated by an outside signal. This broad definition of one function of embedded electronics actually embraces several dozen recent technical advances that interface with digital information processors to produce some extremely valuable applications.

Looking only at the most obvious function, if the activating device asks the embedded electronic chip the simple question, "Who are you?", it can trigger a detailed response that may include: "I am a model #87106123 widget that was produced as part of batch B1576 on May 20, 2002 at the Allentown, PA Plant and shipped to Wal-Mart Store #2870 by J.B. Hunt Transport on May 23 2002 at a wholesale unit price of $2.35 ready for a retail sale at $ 2.99."

Imagine for a moment the economic value of that simple yet instantaneous exchange of information. Worldwide billions of dollars are spent each year measuring and controlling inventory. With embedded electronics constant inventories can be instantly, accurately, and inexpensively accumulated with no hand counting or laborious bar code reading involved.

Tremendous Savings
The new scanning devices are said to be capable of reading up to 50 product tags per second and automatically transferring the information to a computerized database. Proctor and Gamble estimated that the information provided by electronic product tags will cut its inventory costs by 40% for a net saving of 1.5 billion dollars. The company estimates that this could reduce product costs by up to 4 cents on every dollar.

Further major savings are anticipated by reducing check-out and payment processing time. A shopping cart filled with diverse merchandise can be scanned as it is rolled past a scanning device and a detailed accurate sales ticket can be printed out almost instantly. The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, will run a market test on embedded electronics at their Sam's Club stores in Tulsa, Oklahoma this year. Their target is a saving of 4% in overall operating costs that rivals their current after tax net profit on all operations. Wal-Mart plans a complete conversion to embedded electronics within a ten-year period. Any manufacturer that hopes to supply Wal-Mart would do well to start a program for use of embedded electronic product tags as soon as possible.

Chips & Scanners
The major restraint to the use of embedded electronic devices has historically been unit cost not only for the chips but also for the activating and reading devices. This is changing rapidly. MIT raised $9,000,000 for research in this area from a select group of private companies plus the United States Department of Defense. The research funded by this effort called the AutoID Center has resulted in a prediction that embedded electronic devices will drop in cost from 80 cents to 5 cents within the next year. Even lower prices are anticipated.

Alien Technology, a chip making company located in Morgan Hill, California has developed electronic chips no larger than a piece of glitter used to decorate women's evening dresses. Chemicals are used to etch ultrafine perforations into a silicon wafer. The resulting shards, suspended in a solution, are poured down a sloped surface covered by a dimpled plastic film. As the tiny blocks tumble down the slope, gravity pulls them into micropores. Paired with a small antenna, the chips broadcast on an unlicensed frequency near the FM band, with a range that varies from a few inches to several yards. Other units will be equipped with a tiny battery printed on paper or silicon to increase their range to as much as several hundred feet.

Thing-Magic, a MIT Media Lab spin-off company has developed prototype scanners that can be manufactured and sold for $100 each�down from the current price of $1,000. The great interest in embedded electronic devices has already caused the cost-curve to ski down a silicon Everest. Those manufacturers continuing to rely on bar code readers will never get off the bunny slope.

Today's Applications
Diverse profitable applications are springing up for the use of this technology as rapidly as prices are dropping. One imaginative Italian design house is using electronic tags in clothing products to trigger flat screen displays showing professional models wearing the garment along with a pitch about accessories that would go well. Theft prevention is another area of major use for this technology. Embedded electronics can also be used to warn a product user of an impending malfunction. The devices can automatically trigger mold changes in manufacturing machinery to facilitate short production runs.

Some of these devices are designed to warn a manufacturer that there is an overheated bearing in a piece of production machinery or that pressures in chamber are insufficient for high-quality injection molding.

Embedded electronics allow products to be tracked by manufacturers to determine when and where they were originally sold. Products submitted for warranty claims can be clearly identified as to when and where they were purchased.

Conclusion
If information is indeed king, embedded electronics will be the knight errant in the quest to use that valuable information. The real problem is not finding the tools that are available in this field because there are literally thousands of offerings from hundreds of companies.

The problem is implementation---using embedded electronics to do precisely what you want it to do at the lowest possible price while maintaining reliable performance.