Michelin RFID Tire Tag

Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. has signed a patent license agreement with global tire giant Michelin for RFID tags embedded in tires. Based on Michelin's patent license for the core technology of embedding RFID tags in tires, Murata's tires with built-in RFID tags will be openly supplied to global tire manufacturers, empowering factories and warehouses with automated data collection for tire inventory management, logistics tracking, after-sales maintenance, and whole-life quality traceability, and promoting the industry's digital upgrading.

Driven by the shortage of truck drivers in Japan and the European Union's ESPR eco-design regulation and digital product passporting system (the former requiring the reduction of non-transportation burdens on drivers and the latter mandating the disclosure of sustainable product information), the tire industry is accelerating the integration of RFID tags to improve the efficiency of total lifecycle management. Based on this background, Murata Manufacturing has reached a patent license agreement with its long-term partner Michelin to obtain a patent license for the latter's tire embedding technology, and will supply its built-in RFID tags to global tire manufacturers from January 2025 to provide core hardware support for the industry's digital transformation.

Murata's fourth-generation linkless structure RFID tags use innovative magnetic coupling technology - a non-contact coupling between the RFID module and the external antenna to achieve functionality - and are designed for complex tire conditions. In addition to the supply of hardware, Murata is simultaneously building a full-process service ecosystem, including communication characteristics testing and validation, development of RFID management software id-Bridge, etc., to empower tire manufacturers to achieve a closed loop of digital management of the entire process from production, logistics, sales to maintenance.

RFID technology provides key support for environmental governance while optimizing operations by recording the full life cycle data of RFID chip in tire. This cooperation will accelerate the process of global tire RFID standardization and solve the transportation industry's efficiency and reliability pain points by improving supply chain transparency. In the future, Murata will continue to develop highly adaptable RFID solutions to drive sustainable change in the industry with traceability management at the core.

ESPR (Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation) requires manufacturers to apply rules for eco-design requirements such as durability, repairability and reusability at the product design stage. A digital product passport system is a system that enables the recording and tracking of product sustainability (information on raw materials used, manufacturers, recyclability and disassembly methods).

RFID tags are designed to track all information about a tire from production to end-of-life, which helps to meet the requirements of regulatory initiatives such as the European Union's “eco-design” and digital passport. With the information recorded on the tag, regulators can get a clear picture of the tire's raw material source, production process, history of use, retreading, etc., ensuring that the tire meets the standards of sustainable development and the circular economy, and improving the transparency of the tire production and use process.