Today, October 7, marks the 67th anniversary of the barcode, the most widely used system in the world, that was patented in the United States.
Although in 1952 the year of recognition of this invention was not received positively by many manufacturers, the bar code became a science in itself, which led to the development of modern technologies with an impact and a number of advantages in the marketing of goods.
Barcode is a representation of data that can be read by optical means using technologies such as wired readers, wireless readers or industrial scanners. The black bars printed on a white space are scanned and decoded using 1D or 2D readers that measure light reflection, interpret the codes in numbers and letters and send them to a computer for management.
Made up of 13 digits, of which the first three represent the country code of the country of origin of the product (594 for Romania), the bar code is used in all manufacturing or sales industries.
But, predominantly, bar code technology is present in the following types of activities:
Store management
Retail is the place where barcodes are most commonly found, both integrated in the packaging of products and printed on labels which in turn are glued to sealed or bulk products. The use of barcode technology in retail is now available to any manufacturer, barcode labels can be created quickly and easily through a design and print solution, supplemented by a barcode scanning solution and a POS system ( point of sale / point of sale).
Warehouse management
A Warehouse Management System solution for warehouse management is based on bar code scanning, a solution that helps to automate all freight movements: reception – placement – identification – selection for delivery – replacement – inventory completion.
Event management
The event industry is the newest industry in which bar codes are used for access and, implicitly, managing the event itself, be it conference, exhibition or concert. Through a complete event management solution, such as EventsClip , based on barcode scanning from guests, not only are events organized efficiently, and the crowd at check-in disappears, but complete and comprehensive analysis of flow and behavior of participants.
All the information generated in this way is useful in obtaining some image and cost benefits in organizing the following events. Currently, barcodes are used for increasingly diverse activities due to the advantages they offer. Among these advantages are:
• Working time is significantly reduced – if we compare to how the inventory was kept on the notebook many years ago, now, by scanning the barcode, everything happens instantly, the product and stock information being transmitted and visible in real time ;
• Human errors are eliminated completely – the mistakes made by the employees can be blamed without any justification, because they harm the entire work process in the company; but once the barcode is on the goods, the scanning technology no longer allows any human error to occur and improves the workflow;
• The efficiency is considerably increased – everything happens much faster, in fact in real time, when a barcode is scanned: the products are quickly identified on the shelf, the stock is updated instantly, and the daily activity runs without interruption.
All the above advantages of bar code technology offer, in the medium and long term, a series of benefits for business development, such as faster delivery of products, customer satisfaction and loyalty and cost optimization.
