News | February 27, 2006

Argent Group Partners With Vue Technology To Deliver Item Level RFID Solutions To Manufacturing & Medical Industries

Argent Customers to Benefit from Unprecedented Visibility in Asset Management

Argent Group today announced that it has signed an agreement with Vue Technology that will enable Argent to further expand the range of solutions it currently markets in RFID asset tracking. The partnership enables Vue Technology to increase its presence in the manufacturing and medical sectors where RFID plays an integral role in optimizing the supply chain, including warehouses, distribution centers and civic facilities. Argent Group's customers will benefit from new scalable, cost effective solutions, based on Vue's patented technology, to increase savings throughout the enterprise by decreasing labor and inventory costs and downtime, and increasing asset utilization.

"Our relationship with Argent provides an excellent opportunity for Vue to demonstrate the inherent value of its technology and solutions beyond our core expertise in the retail industry," said Robert Locke, CEO of Vue Technology. "We look forward to working with Argent to deliver the RFID solutions that will change the way assets are tracked and managed across the medical and manufacturing industries and beyond."

Argent Group is a joint venture of Argent Tape & Label – a converter of pressure-sensitive and RFID labels – and Advanced Research Company – a leading systems integrator and producer of standard and custom asset tracking systems. Argent Group has been involved in RFID in the manufacturing arena for over 12 years, and has focused on delivering complete solutions including hardware, software and consumables. The partnership with Vue, the leading provider of cost-effective item-level RFID solutions, allows Argent to deliver emerging RFID technologies further down the supply chain – all the way to the item level.

"The addition of the TrueVUE RFID Platform to Advanced Research's existing asset tracking products provides a significant extra level of granularity and detail, which is something our customers have been looking for," said Barry Brown, of Argent Group. "It will also enable us to expand our market reach beyond the initial installations we have in place with automotive parts companies such as Visteon/Ford Motor Co. and Comau Pico/Lear."

Bill Sharp, President of Advanced Research, adds: "We are confident that this partnership with Vue will greatly enhance our offerings, and along with Vue Technology we will break into other market areas we are targeting beyond manufacturing and medical, such as warehousing and distribution centers, civic facilities and major commercial centers."

Vue's solution will be incorporated into ARC's flagship products as the underlying RFID infrastructure to provide customers with shelf level asset tracking. Open Crib™ is an RFID-enabled crib system for tracking inventory and usage of assets such as spare parts and maintenance components. Satellite Crib™ is a cabinet version which can be utilized in stand-alone form, or linked to Open Crib or other Satellite Cribs. Finally, Asset Where?® is a solution primarily aimed at hospitals and other medical facilities which provides tracking and real-time inventory of various types of assets. These solutions can be utilized with various frequency options, including 915mghz and 2.4ghz (Saw technology).

There is strong evidence of quickly growing interest in utilizing RFID in various asset tracking scenarios beyond the retail sector, as it offers significant levels of information and control with minimal human interface and typically provides excellent R.O.I. Argent Group, now linked with Vue Technology, is extremely well positioned to meet this demand with offerings that can accommodate large variations in scale and asset variety.

About Vue Technology
Vue Technology is the leading provider of item level RFID, delivering breakthrough technology that provides the most scalable, reliable, and ROI-driven solutions on the market. With patent-pending technologies, VUE allows standard RFID readers to network across thousands of antennas, exponentially increasing the number of zones a typical reader can support. Vue provides customers unprecedented visibility into inventory levels, location and authenticity while eliminating the prohibitive cost barriers previously associated with item-level RFID roll-outs.

With its TrueVUE™ RFID Platform, Vue offers the most complete suite of integrated RF networking hardware and EPC management software for item-level RFID, maximizing the benefits to our customers while minimizing implementation risks – at the lowest TCO. For more information, visit www.vuetechnology.com.