A VC in Vacationland

As my original post said a few months ago, LARTE’s are not a new Double Expresso drink at Starbucks, but rather Location Aware Real Time Enterprises.

They are getting a lot of play in the VC Blogs of late, powered no doubt by the growing availability of GPSS/sensor/RFID and related data that can help companies run their product design, plants, supply chains and customer relations much more efficiently.

Conceptually, I like the idea.  In practice, however, most companies are having so many problems getting the simplest use of real time data into decision making that I doubt we will see many existing companies become real time data junkies any time soon. And there are a fair amount of misconceptions about what is real time data in supply chains.

So, repeat after me–RFID and other related data is not "real time" data.  It only tells you when a product went through a reader, not where it is at the moment. It could be hours or days before it goes through a scanner again.  So what’s a company to do if it wants real time tracking of products in the supply chain? 

Perhaps Dust Networks can provide part of the answer. By constantly reading the location of all products within reach via its motes network of tiny sensors, one could develop an RFID network that could locate tagged items without the aid of readers.  Dust Networks is based on a new location estimation innovation in sensor networks–RF Time of Flight. In a conventional RFID installation, one would need RFID readers everywhere to pick up data from the tagged product, unless one invested in powerful sensors (read: expensive).

RF Time of Flight has its roots in Smart Dust. Smart Dust is defined as motes attached to products who search out and find other motes, connect with them, form a broader network and communicate information across the network. One would set up a mesh network (in, for example, a warehouse) in a similar manner to a traditional RFID or wireless network, but using only a small number of readers (less than 10%) than in current installations. Assuming the thousands of products in the facility are tagged with motes, the motes begin communicating, set up their own mesh network and begin reporting their position.  Measuring the distance from one mote to another allows calculation of item location, even if the product is in motion.

At the moment, the motes are the size of a nickel, but the plan is to make them the size of a grain of sand.  Like traditional RFID chips, the motes have sensors, computing circuits, bi-directional wireless technology, with an antenna and power supply external to the chip. The motes can be set to record and transmit vibrations, temperature and light.

The big issues in designing motes are reducing the size and power consumption of the motes, no easy tasks.  There are a number of competitors also working the space–Crossbow, Millennial and Ember.

There have been some early adopters of the technology, including the well-known supply chain innovator, Emerson Electric. Asset tracking is one of the principal applications of the technology among early adopters.

Look for RF Time of Flight applications to become a primary component of "real-time" supply chains in the next few years