The Downside of Barcode Verification
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Posted in: Verification
I admit it—this title is a blatant attempt to draw attention and stimulate readership, but not just out of commercial greed. There actually is a downside, or perhaps better said, a neglected or dark side of the barcode verification “science”.
Test it out for yourself. Did the reseller who sold you your barcode verifier admit to you that it doesn’t do absolutely everything necessary to protect you from a barcode-related disaster? I would be willing to bet that you discovered some unchecked attributes of the barcode.
Before I go into some examples of these disasters-in-waiting, let’s discuss the reason why they exist. Overall the largest single factor is the ANSI specification for barcode quality—and for sake of clarity, I’m talking about linear barcodes here. The ANSI spec includes 8 attributes based mostly on reflective properties. Now that we’ve stated it simply, it’s easier to see what some of the unexamined attributes might be: things not checked by ANSI, for example.
A recent example we saw was symbol type. A client came to us wanting help deciphering their verifier test report. We explained everything and felt very smart. The client went away, printed a jillion barcodes, happily verifying them rigorously and getting ANSI A grades. Sadly, his client wasn’t impressed that all jillion of the Codabar symbols he printed were so perfect, since they should have been EAN 13 symbols. Did the verifier tell him they were Codabar symbols? Well yes it did. But he was looking only at the ANSI grade.
Another example we saw was even more subtle. The verifier correctly identified the symbology and graded it; once again, the client was satisfied. But the human readables beneath the barcode didn’t match the decoded information as reported by the verifier—and of course the verifier was correct. Somehow the bars and spaces in the barcode didn’t match the human readables. Somebody in stripping or graphics did something very creative—and disastrous. Once again, heads rolled. Once again, the verifier did everything it was designed to do, and the human operator failed to notice.
This is the downside of barcode verification. Call it pilot error, complacency, plain ignorance, reseller neglect, whatever. The smartest component in the verification process is not the electronic device. It’s the user.
Do you have examples of similar disasters? I’d love to hear about them.
For further info contact: John Nachtrieb
Fotel, Inc. 1125 E. St. Charles Rd., Suite 100 Lombard, IL 60148
Phone (800)-834-4920 ext#13
