What is the Most Overlooked Step in Measuring Barcode Quality?
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Posted in: Verification
An Ounce of Prevention- or Remediation-
I just finished presenting another Barcode 101 Seminar. This is one of my favorite things. There is so much about it that is- just wonderful. You get to meet people on their terms, and on their turf. Usually there is a group, sometimes a fairly large group. People are where they are comfortable and often they open up. They talk about their barcode problems and we get to help them. What could be better than that?
That old adage about “…an ounce of prevention…” really exposes its limitations in these situations. Sure it’s better to prevent problems. Nobody would doubt that. But few people have the foresight, or the time, or the budget to prevent problems these days. We can waste a lot of time and bandwidth kvetching about that, but at the end of the day, that’s just how it is. It’s one of the several frustrations people of good conscience, doing the best they can, often in big companies, must suffer. It’s always a privilege to deal with people of good conscience- whatever the circumstance.
The problem with the adage is that it describes a finite world. We live in a linear world. We can almost never prevent the first problem. But think of all of the “next problems” we can prevent if we learn from that first one.
This is especially evident in “channel” systems, like the retail channel, or trace and track, and manufacturing lines. Wherever there is a stream, especially a “downstream” there will be future opportunities for an ounce of prevention. Where the barcode is a tool in that system, our barcode quality seminar can make a big difference.
We’ve probably presented the barcode seminar to several tens of thousands of people in more conference rooms and companies than I can remember or about 20 years. We always do a follow-up with the client and we always do out own post-mortem back home so we can hold ourselves accountable to the continuous improvement discipline. For some reason, this time it came down to trying to identify the single most important thing that almost everybody overlooks in their barcode quality program.
- Was it lack of knowledge of the ISO specifications for barcode quality?
- Was it lack of knowledge about a specific symbology?
- Was it lack of verification equipment?
The salesperson in me strained to say it was something I could sell, but the truth is, the single most important thing that almost everybody overlooks in their barcode quality program is looking at their barcodes carefully.
Don’t buy a microscope. The best tool is a cheap, plastic 8X magnifier.You’ll still need an ISO/ANSI compliant barcode verifier,
and maybe a Barcode Training Seminar.
Start with a simple magnifier.
