The Future of Barcoding
Monday, May 12, 2008
Posted in: Barcodes
The Future of Barcodes- That is a bold statement for several reasons. For one, it assumes there will be a future for barcodes: there are many voices, from the RFID community and others, forecasting the demise of barcodes. Another voice, or maybe it is more the momentum of history seen as a future trajectory, envisions barcodes doing what they do and looking like the look.
The Evolution of Barcodes- Many of us in the barcode industry think it is possible that the historical role of the barcode will evolve. In fact it has already started. This will affect not only how barcodes look in the future, but how dependant the role of the barcode will be for the success of the complete supply chain cycle.
New Benefits of Barcodes- Think about it. The Ubiquitous UPC, as it is now used, is more of a model number than a serial number. To illustrate, every 12 ounce can of Coke® sold anywhere on the planet bears the same code. You might be able to extract some generalized information about sales of 12 ounce cans of Coke®, but you can never singulate a particular can from the millions of other, virtually identical cans of the same product.And why would you want to singulate one individual from another? There are already myriad reasons, and the list is growing. You may want to control freshness; you might want to track product movement; you might want to distinguish product from specific sources. And here’s the current hot button: you might have to recall product from a specific batch, date-range, manufacturing source or distribution channel. None of this functionality is available in machine-readable form from the UPC.This is more than just a data capacity issue.
We already have the technology to encode vast amounts of data in a relatively small space: the back side of many state drivers’ licenses is evidence of that. The greater challenge is serialization: to singulate cans of Coke® you must mark each can uniquely while still performing database look-up for pricing, inventory movement and replenishment. Database lookup can be accomplished with a family code or data range within which individual siblings reside. A vastly greater challenge is individualized product marking. The item cost of the UPC on billions of identically-marked product is nearly too small to calculate (which is why barcode is impossible to compare with RFID tags). Uniquely marking each SKU changes the cost profile drastically—if it continues to be done the say it’s done today. Big distinction.
The Next Generation of Barcodes- Since inception back in the early 1970’s the presence of the barcode has been inexorably linked to the product reprographics. The evolving needs of tracking and automation have begun to unlock that linkage. Advances in high speed serialized marking are making it feasible to singulate items in huge populations of otherwise identical commodities. It hasn’t happened in barcoding at the item level in the retail channel—yet.
The Dependability of Barcodes- The changing role of the barcode has increased the importance of barcode quality. Barcode quality needs to be accessed at every step of product development. What type of barcode is best for the job? How can you assure data accuracy? What barcode printing technology is best to use? What is the best location for the barcode? How do you measure the quality of a barcode? What is barcode verification?
If a barcode does not scan, or decodes the wrong information- all barcoding benefits could end up costing not only loss of money, but loss of business.
Barcodes are here to stay, but don’t expect the symbols to be applied, used, look or perform like they do today.
Comments
cool
Posted by on 03/04 at 03:56 AMgreat article,thanks.^_^
Posted by on 09/14 at 10:30 AM
Bar coding paper
Posted by on 11/25 at 10:11 AM