CREATIVE
WAYS TO USE BARCODES AROUND THE WORLD
If you’re a small business owner who
recognizes the value of tracking your inventory as it makes its way from the
supply chain, you probably already utilize barcodes in some capacity. Either
that, or you’ve enlisted the services of a third-party company—like FedEx,
Postmates, DoorDash, just to name a few—that does.
The truth is, most of us, in our daily lives,
don’t give barcodes a second glance. If we’re using self-checkout at the
grocery store, that might be the only time all week we even think to look for
that simple yet fantastically effective design, which tells the computer how
much to charge us for that head of lettuce or pound of turkey.
But barcodes are more than just supermarket
shorthand. They are one of the essential building blocks of inventory and
asset management systems around the world. They’re what companies like
Amazon, Target and Wal-Mart use to remain ruthlessly efficient in the
global marketplace; they’re how small business owners can track a customer’s
package from one doorstep to another. They are becoming ubiquitous in the world
of supply chain management, and when something becomes ubiquitous, people start
getting creative with them.
Whether you’re carving out a niche as a
mid-level distributor, or you’re a one-person business selling your handcrafted
wares on platforms like Amazon and Etsy, you might want to take note of the
inventive ways barcodes are being used around the world. Perhaps your can
incorporate greater efficiency into your supply chain, or create new chains
where none existed before.
DON’T STOP AT ONE: PUT BARCODES
EVERYWHERE
We’ve all been there: Standing at the checkout
line, turning the box end over end, trying to find the barcode, and then when
we do, moving it past the barcode reader five or six times until we get a
reading. It’s even stranger to watch a cashier go through this struggle, and it
takes valuable time. Think of all the billions of packages that move across the
globe and put various people through this brief but costly process.
Once you think of it that way, there’s a
certain genius to the madness of Aldi, a cheap supermarket chain in the vein of
Trader Joe’s that focuses on its own private label brands. Aldi absolutely
slathers on the barcodes—there’s a barcode on almost every surface of every
product—or enlarges them well past the traditional size.
BARCODE: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO
BARCODES
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The result? Aldi is renowned for its
incredibly fast check out process. Lots of companies feel as though they can’t
mess with their packaging by affixing multiple barcodes to it, but if you’re
visiting Aldi, you’re not there for the pretty packaging. You’re there for low prices,
which come as a result of low labor costs and less attention paid to aesthetics
than results.
If you’re looking for ways to increase
efficiency, don’t stop at one barcode, or limit yourself to traditional
packaging. This small hack reportedly lets Aldi employees scan items 40
percent faster than other retail stores. Would you turn down a 40 percent
boost in any category?
USE BARCODES TO TELL THE STORY OF A
PRODUCT
As mentioned above, most of us don’t think
about barcodes once we leave the store. But what if barcodes could tell us more
about the product we’re purchasing than how much it costs? Some sellers around
the globe are beginning to embed more information in their barcodes than would
be useful to just retailers.
This isn’t an entirely new concept: 2D
barcodes (like QR or Data Matrix codes) which hold markedly more data than
traditional 1D codes, have been able to provide photos, website links, and
other customer-facing information to consumers for years. But recent campaigns
have pushed this idea even further.
For example, wooden handicrafts made in
India and sold abroad are soon going to include barcodes that carry
details about the product. India, among several other countries, is looking to
rebuild consumer confidence after tough laws against illegally harvested timber
were recently enacted. The barcodes will be able to tell the origin and history
of the wood used to make that piece.
Imagine knowing just about everything you
could about the gift you bought online from India, including exactly where the
rosewood originated from and what steps it took to get to your door. One of the
problems people have with online shopping is that it removes the personal
connection from the purchase—but surprisingly, information technology can help
bridge that gap again.
Small businesses could do the same with their
products, to instill in customers a sense of trust and loyalty. By listing the
providence of the item—where its materials are from, how it was made, what it
took to make it—businesses can be transparent and held accountable.
Or maybe the story you want to tell isn’t
about origin, but fiction, in order to grow the legend and mystique of your
products (all in good fun, of course). The point being, there is no limit to
how you can use your barcode to communicate with your customer after the sale
has been completed. Go as entertaining or informative as you please.
USE BARCODES TO BRING ALL YOUR SYSTEMS
INTO ALIGNMENT
What’s the one place you don’t want a single
mistake to be made under any circumstances? If you guessed “hospital,” we’re on
the same wavelength (mustard instead of mayo on your sandwich is easier to fix
than administering the wrong dosage of medicine).
Healthcare 2D
Barcode Scanner
Luckily, the use of barcodes in order to
eliminate errors in the world of pharmaceutical drug management is becoming the
norm. Hospitals use so many different systems to track the wellbeing of their
patients, it’s surprising more life-threatening mistakes aren’t made.
Now, in places like Dubai, it’s now
obligatory that all pharmaceutical companies, agents, and suppliers use
barcodes on their medicines, based on GS1 Standards and 2D Data Matrix. The
barcodes with comply with approved systems and be compatible with the EPIC
system and the smart pharmacy system, in order to ensure drug safety.
That’s probably the best part about barcodes:
It’s virtually impossible to have a read error on them. Meanwhile, humans
constantly making key-entry errors and are liable to make mistakes in ways that
will mess up many a spreadsheet.
USE THEM IN FUN MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
2D barcodes have been used to varying levels
of success over the years, but using a barcode printer to print out a 2D
barcode that can be used in a variety of fun marketing campaigns still couldn’t
be easier.
Just a few ideas: Set up an online shop
and leave the link in a QR code outside your building when you’re closed, to
encourage shopping any time of day. Send people to your social media channels
like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, to encourage them to follow or like your
page. Put it on business cards and give people a reason to keep your card for
more than a few moments before tossing it away.
Barcodes have been used in innovative ways for
years now. Here are some more interesting ways that businesses,
nonprofits, and individuals alike have used barcodes to their distinct
advantage, whether it was in providing more value to the customer or to make it
easier for the company to follow regulatory rules.
These patterns of lines (and now, little
squares) have long been flexible and deceptively useful in the retail space. As
our use of smartphones (as barcode scanners and image readers) increases, the
ways in which businesses can use barcodes to enhance their business’ processes
will become equally myriad. Barcodes may usually be boxy in shape, but don’t be
afraid to think outside the box when it comes to tracking your inventory and
assets.
HOW
THE BARCODE MAKES REAL-TIME PACKAGE TRACKING POSSIBLE
Do me a favor: Go find a package you recently
received.
Did you find one? Great, now look at the
label. Do you see that mass of blocks and black? You should recognize that from
other purchases you made in-store: It’s just a regular barcode, or possibly a
quick response (QR) code, the same as you would find on a pack of gum or box of
copy paper.
Did you ever track that package, impatient to
see when it would arrive? Thank that barcode: It made it possible for you to
stay in-the-know when it came to your package’s progress. While it may seem
like a great step from the original purpose of a barcode – a simple method to read
product information – it’s not. You can instead think of it as an
expansion to read this information at varying points across the supply chain.
1D AND THE BEGINNING
The modern barcode came as a means to make
checkout scans at grocers’ registers easier and more efficient. The
thing is: The first scan happened in 1974, 25 years after Joe
Woodland and Bob Silver filed their patent on the design. The varied-width
lines, a step away from the initial bullseye design, soon graced much more than
packs of Juicy Fruit. Even your car is marked with a 1D traditional barcode:
Look at your VIN plate.
These codes also helped give birth to the
barcode scanner: What good does a code do if you can’t read it? These devices
follow the encoded information, organized horizontally left to right, and
translate it from code to database. This in turn prompts the register to add a
specific amount to a tab and inventory to deduct a certain amount of product
from the available supply. Your car can be added to the waiting list for an oil
change with a quick scan of the dashboard. You can be triaged and logged in the
hospital’s database before you see the inside of your room.
5 Ways to Use QR
Codes from Wasp Barcode
2D AND EVOLUTION
2D barcodes, or quick response (QR) codes,
reduce greater amounts of data to digitized blocks with fewer scanning issues.
The biggest benefit offered by these codes is universal readability: No matter
the orientation of the code, a QR scanner can successfully scan and translate
it. 1D codes require a horizontal scanner orientation to read.
These codes came about as a way for the
Japanese auto industry to keep track of vehicles during the
production process. As production progressed, the QR code would be scanned and
logged, an early example of the real-time capability offered by these pixelated
squares. Twenty years later, these barcodes and their 1D predecessors make it
possible to track almost anything anywhere at any time with nothing more than a
smartphone and an app.
THE MEANING IN THE MATRIX
It doesn’t matter if you used a 1D or 2D
barcode, you still accomplished the same goal: You successfully encoded some
amount of data into a small space. The difference is, aside from appearance, is
the amount of data. A typical 1D will contain three pieces of
information: The issuing country, the product manufacturer, and the product.
This information, read from left to right, is unrepeated throughout the barcode
and becomes useless if damaged or misprinted. Picture a box of cereal damaged
when a stocker sliced through the packaging tape: The damaged lines could now
be misread or misunderstood by the scanner.
BENEFITS OF USING A SMAT PHONE AS A BARCODE SCANNER
2D codes position their information in two ways: Vertically and horizontally. The dual positioning allows the code to be read even if damaged. The character capacity of these codes is exponentially greater than that of 1D codes: Code 128, a 1D, offers 128-character max; an alphanumeric 2D can fit more than 4,200 characters.
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