All About Bar Codes
Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 About Bar Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Automatic Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Benefits of Bar Coding . .
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Introduction In today’s business environment, staying competitive is critical to your success. Bar code data-collection technology is an effective way to improve the bottom line and meet the competitive challenges your organization faces every day. This special guide from Datalogic is designed to give you and your company information about bar code data-capture technology.
Consequently, opportunities to improve operational efficiencies and customer responsiveness have developed for retailers, transportation and package delivery companies, manufacturers, wholesale distributors and service providers. Benefits of Bar Coding Bar code data-collection systems provide enormous benefits for just about any business. With a bar code data-collection solution, capturing data is faster and more accurate, costs are lower, mistakes are minimized, and managing inventory is much easier.
2) Customer Satisfaction: A proper bar code system will speed customer checkout. This will improve customer satisfaction enough to directly increase revenue over time. 3) Reduced Inventory Costs: Immediate access to inventory information on a real-time basis can be used to reduce inventory levels. This will reduce costs for a company in a number of ways, including interest, labor for handling excess inventory, and facility overhead.
tracking. Collection of Data from Forms Businesses such as medical and dental practices rely on complex patient forms. Using bar codes, detailed information can be quickly entered in the computer. Bar codes printed by check boxes on a form allow fast accurate data entry by simply scanning the codes by the check boxes. This makes an easy task of gathering large amounts of information for a client. Reduced data collection costs and better service are the results.
In and On-Counter Stationary Scanners Magellan®, Datalogic’s family of fixed position retail scanners belong to this category and include presentation/sweep scanners, single plane scanners, and Bi-optic scanners. These types of laser scanners are non-contact scanning devices which are used for medium-to-high volume retail scanning environments such as supermarkets, hypermarkets, drug, convenience and specialty stores. They easily connect to your point-of-sale terminals for data collection and reporting.
1) Dedicated Bar Code Printers: These produce very rugged bar codes. Dedicated printers come in several varieties, including thermal and thermal transfer. The best of them can produce bar codes that are not bothered by acids, rain, sunlight, or various other problems. These printers can also print a single tag or sticker easily and remove the label backing automatically. 2) Laser and Ink Jet Printers: Bar codes printed by these printers are comparable to those printed on dedicated label printers.
3) Laser Scanners: These are the best type of input device and are therefore the most expensive of the hand-held options. They will work with curved or uneven surfaces and will read most very low quality bar codes. They will also read over a much greater distance than wands or CCDs, usually 5” to 27” (I2 to 65 cm). Laser scanners come in general-purpose and heavy-duty versions.
a “serial eavesdrop” cable to connect the scanner between the terminal and the host computer. When using serial scanners with PCs, keep in mind that your application needs to “monitor” the serial port for incoming data. Most applications do not do this, and so an additional piece of software, called a “software wedge”, may be required. Operating Systems Once you have decided on the scanner technology, you must design the system. These systems can be set up in several configurations.
Networks Networks work just like several single-user systems connected together to share data. These work much like the multi-user systems shown above, except that each station is able to run any application. Networked PCs can run graphics-based and textonly applications and perform any other MS-DOS or Windows functions. The multi-user systems mentioned above will work with any text-based program. Networks provide this flexibility at the expense of cost. These systems also require a PC at each station.
2) Backup Hardware: As a system is integrated into a process, it will gradually become more critical. Try to have backup hardware somewhere to take care of the inevitable failure. In many cases, you can keep a spare PC in use for another purpose as long as it can be quickly brought on line in case of a failure. Be sure to keep the software on the spare PC up to date so that it can be switched quickly. Insist the company purchase a tape backup system and schedule it for automatic daily backups.
Symbology Types Checksums Checksums are additional characters appended to bar codes to guarantee good reads. Checksums are necessary on some bar codes that are prone to errors. For example, Interleaved 2 of 5 is a very dense, numeric-only bar code, but it is prone to substitution errors. You should always use a checksum on this code and on any other code where checksums are available.
UPC (Universal Product Code) UPC is the standard bar code for items for sale to the public. It is the code seen on items at the local supermarket. UPC-A is a fixed-length, numeric-only bar code. Traditionally, the UPC contains 1 digit for a Number System Character, 5 digits for the manufacturer number, 5 digits for the product number, and one checksum digit.
MSI/Plessey The MSI bar code is used most often in the grocery industry for shelf labels. This is a numeric-only code that stands up well to wear and tear. This code is not self checking, and so a checksum is required. It supports three types of checksums. Figure 13 - MSI/Plessey Symbology 2D Bar Code Symbologies A 2D (two-dimensional) bar code symbology allows vast amounts of data on a single bar code by storing data in 2 dimensions.
The smaller size of the RSS family is due to clever innovations in modern symbology design that allow RSS symbols to be printed in various compact forms without compromising the performance of scanners designed to read them. RSS Limited and some forms of RSS-14 are designed to be read only by single-line hand-held scanners. Other forms of RSS-14 and all RSS Expanded symbols are designed to be read efficiently by omni-directional scanners.
RSS Expanded Stacked® RSS Expanded can be printed in stacked rows with an even number of segments in each row. The stacked format is used to fit in a narrow space or to print with a narrow print head. Depending on the width and the number of segments, RSS Expanded Stacked can have from two to eleven rows. The separator pattern between the rows is designed to eliminate cross-row scanning errors. RSS Expanded Stacked has the same omni-directional scanning performance as standard RSS Expanded.
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