Patent ID: 8779903

Claim:
A method for utilizing a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag in manufacturing comprising the steps of: a first vendor storing data for an initial manufacturing event in an as built history on the RFID tag associated with a manufactured assembly; a second vendor storing additional data for a second manufacturing event into the as built history on the RFID tag, wherein the step of storing the additional data for the second manufacturing event comprises a micro-controller on the RFID tag processing commands from an RFID reader to append the data of the second manufacturing event to the data for the initial manufacturing event in the as built history that creates a history of the manufactured assembly; wherein the step of storing the data for the initial and second manufacturing events comprises storing a different part number and serial number for each sub-assembly installed into the manufactured assembly, and storing a vendor ID for each sub-assembly to reflect a changing nature of the assembly as sub-assemblies are added to the assembly; and wherein the commands include initialize the data storage, add data to head of the list, read head node, read a node at a list location, and clear the list.