When is the Best Time to Test Your Barcode for Accuracy & Quality?
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Posted in: Verification
When to Verify your barcode?
The question of when to verify seems to imply that there are times not to verify, and that is not what I’m suggesting.
It is always better to verify than never to, but there are better times and worse times to do it. I know this from personal observation.
It is an amazing thing to be invited to a major retailer who has not been verifying the barcodes on their consumer packaging. But it is even more amazing to find that many major retailers are not requiring their contract package printers to verify.
The best time to verify is, of course, before the barcode enters the retail channel. If is better to detect a batch of bad barcodes and reprint them or over-sticker them before they get out and wreak all the havoc they will inevitably on inventories and point-of-sale meltdown and unhappy consumers. But there is an even better time to verify (isn’t this just obvious?).
The best time to verify a barcode is when something can be done about improving its performance if, for some reason, it isn’t performing as it should. And that time is the moment of conception, if you will, when the ink is going onto the package.
Everyone reading this is saying, “Well duh!” but (trust me) this is not so obvious to a lot of otherwise very smart people in very large consumer product companies. Maybe its human nature; maybe it’s too small a detail in comparison to all the much more earth-shaking issues and concerns they face; maybe its complacency. I don’t know.
If you work for a large consumer products company, here’s how to think of it and say it to your printer vendors.
“You print our barcodes and it’s important that they perform as they should.
We are holding you responsible for them—do you understand?"
"Here is what you must do to test them:
- Buy a verifier that is ANSI compliant.
- Buy as many of them as you need to test every barcode you print.
- Make sure you go to a vendor who will train you on how to use it.
- Then use it—and be prepared to prove to us that you did."
"Do you have any questions?”
They may not like it, but they love to cash your check and they want to continue doing so. You’re not being a bad guy, you are just specifying what you expect in return for your loyalty.
For further info contact: John Nachtrieb
Phone (800)-834-4920 ext#13
