The budding partnership between Alien Technology Corp. and North Dakota State University is growing toward full bloom. Alien's plans call for a research and manufacturing plant to be built at NDSU's Research and Technology Park. Until the facility is ready, the company has announced it is leasing space at 1700 42nd St. SW, Fargo.

The Morgan Hill, Calif., company is a leader in the development of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, tiny transmitters that can be used to track retail products. The company's patented manufacturing process, Fluidic Self Assembly, ensures a reliable and cost-efficient delivery of RFID tags in large volumes.

The company expects to start Fargo operations in early May with about 14 employees, including engineers and shipping, receiving and human resources personnel. The Fargo facility will receive integrated circuits that have been placed in a small carrier, called "straps," from the Morgan Hill facility. In Fargo, the straps will be attached to antennas and then shipped to customers.

"Depending on demand, the number of Fargo employees could grow to 30 by the end of the year," explained Paul Drzaic, Alien's vice president for advanced development programs. "Our planned capacity by the end of 2004 (in the leased facility in Fargo) should be about 25 million RFID tags per month."

The economic potential for the technology is remarkable, considering the proponents of RFID tags have been large corporations such as Wal-Mart, Gillette Co. and Proctor and Gamble Co., along with the Department of Defense.

"Each of these has announced aggressive plans to implement RFID in their systems. The first implementation demanded by Wal-Mart and the Defense Department is January 2005," Drzaic said. "Wal-Mart is talking with its top 137 suppliers in moving to a system where every case and every pallet has an RFID tag on it. We won't win all of that business, but we expect to have a large chunk of it."

Alien's collaboration with NDSU goes back about four years, when work began on a Defense Department-sponsored program for wireless sensors. The combination of the expertise of Alien and the researchers at the university's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology proved to be a great fit.

"To date, the relationship has been very solid and we are looking to expand in other areas," Drzaic said. "We're increasing the number of contacts and collaborations between NDSU faculty and Alien engineers with new initiatives aimed at agriculture, food safety and animal husbandry."

The company also is exploring conducting Alien Academy seminars at Fargo's Skills and Technology Training Center, perhaps beginning within six months to one year. "We describe the academy as a boot camp where our customers can come in to learn about RFID," Drzaic said. "We generally get people who are planning on buying Alien equipment, so they come to get training and interact with our sales staff."

Other collaborations aside, the major focal point of the NDSU-Alien partnership continues to be the planned research and manufacturing plant. When completed at the Research and Technology Park, Drzaic expects its capacity to expand to an impressive 20 billion straps per year.

"We've been very interested in transferring from a development company to a manufacturing company. We've committed to doing the bulk of our manufacturing in Fargo, and that's very exciting," he said. "This is what we've been aiming for, and the fact that it is coming to pass is very gratifying for us all."