Barcode is Good for Your Wealth
| Pages | 18-22 |
| Published date | 01 February 1990 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635579010000831 |
| Date | 01 February 1990 |
| Author | Roger Lavery |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
18 INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT & DATA SYSTEMS 90,2
B
arcode is a productivity tool eminently
suited to diverse non-retail applications.
Barcode is
Good for
Your Wealth
Roger Lavery
Barcode which, throughout the 1970s, developed into a
powerful automatic identification technique in the retail
industry has, over the past decade, become widely
recognised as a productivity tool eminently suited to
diverse non-retail applications. The ever-decreasing cost
of
the
computer, and the advent of
the
high performance
microprocessor, now makes a relatively sophisticated
barcode system a feasible proposition in any but the
smallest organisation.
But why use barcode at all? Well obviously the need for
a barcode system depends on a need to keep track of
information, be it production
flow,
library books or medical
records. That accepted, barcode has two major advantages
over the written record or keyboard entry, namely
accuracy
and
speed. It
is
accepted that the error
rate
when
keying
into
a computer
is
around
1 in 300
characters.
Since
most keying in is done from written records, the
opportunity for errors is further increased.
Barcode, on the other hand, requires neither the skills
of the keyboard operator nor the concentration of the
person wielding the pen and pad. A simple pass of the
scanner across
a
coded label
is all
that is needed to record
data many thousands of times more accurately than with
manual techniques.
Of course there are alternative methods of automatic
identification, for
example,
encoded magnetic strip as on
a credit card, and magnetic ink character recognition
(MICR) as on a cheque. However for sheer cost-
effectiveness, flexibility and practicality none can rival
barcode in the industrial environment.
A
barcode
is a
set of bars and spaces arranged
to
represent
data. Barcode "symbology" refers to particular sets of
rules governing how data is represented. There are a
number of symbologies to suit particular application areas
such as UPC/EAN for
retail,
Code
39
which was the first
alpha-numeric symbology and
now
accepted as the de facto
standard in many non-retail applications, Code 49 which
is an ultra high density alpha-numeric code for labelling
very small objects, and so forth and so on.
The choice of
symbology
is sometimes dictated
by
outside
influence, e.g. UPC/EAN for
retail.
However, where there
are only internal considerations, then the decision should
be made with regard to such items as the type of data
to be encoded, the physical size of
the
label required and
the type of printer to be used.
Reading Barcode
Stunning Devices
At the "sharp end" of the reading process is the scanning
device, of which the simplest form
is
the hand-held wand
or light pen. A focused beam coming down through the
tip of the wand is drawn across the subject label by the
operator. The light reflected from the bar and space
pattern is detected and routed to a reader for
interpretation. This type of device requires contact with
the label since the depth of field is small
—
enough to
allow for a plastic substrate over the label, but not much
more. A variation on this is the contact gun; same
principle, but packaged into a pistol-shaped scanner.
Contact scanning is impractical in many situations. For
example, parts on high shelves in a warehouse,
components mounted on visible but inaccessible parts of
an engine, medical supplies in a locked glass cabinet and
so on. Also it is impractical to contact-scan labels placed
on irregular or flexible surfaces.
The fixed beam non-contact scanner can handle some of
these problems but it still depends on operator skill to
draw the scanner beam smoothly across the label. The
scanner most suited to industrial use by virtue of its
greater depth of field and the ability to be easily aimed
at labels at
a
variety of distances, is the
moving
beam laser
gun. This uses a focused beam of laser light and the
scanning motion is provided
by
an internal opto-mechanical
system. The operator merely aims the gun at the label
and the internal mechanism causes the beam to scan the
label at typically
40
scans per
second.
Such a high number
of scans in so little time results in exceptionally good read
rates,
even with less than perfect labels.
Production
line
work involving unattended
barcode
reading,
such as identifying items on
a
conveyor, could use a fixed-
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