Tens of thousands of organizations all over the world have adopted bar code data collection technology over the past twenty-five years. Let's take a quick look at several uses that have changed the way we live.

Every grocery store puts a high value on their product stocking and display space, and would also like to serve as many customers as possible. By innovative advertising and merchandising a store may continually increase its customer traffic, but eventually will reach a time when more check-out stations must be added to handle the additional customers. Doing this, though, removes some product and display space, which has a high cost to the store. By installing bar code scanning at checkout counters, this process is speeded up and product stocking and display space is not reduced. As a customer benefit to using bar code, checkout receipts are very detailed which permits item by item verification by the shopper.

The grocery merchant's next benefit, using bar code, is in avoiding stockouts, the situation when a customer finds an empty shelf where their favorite product should be. The store computer supporting the checkout scanner is connected to the supermarket headquarters computer. As a result, every item purchased can be replaced in a day or so without creating manual reports at the store. This process is so exact that lower stock levels can be established for each store, bringing higher profits to the grocery store owners, due to lower inventory carrying costs.

Production assembly control was an early use of bar code technology. Today, bar code use begins when the manufacturer sends a purchase order to a supplier for components. The components are individually bar coded, and the shipment container is bar coded as well. Scanning these labels triggers the reporting of the components shipment from the manufacturer's receiving dock directly to the final assembly location. After a product is built, the need for detailed control procedures increases. Bar code scanning of filled orders assures the matching of each shipment with the proper transport carrier. If shipment damage occurs, bar code scanners record this condition during delivery inspection. If product warranty claims are made, or if a product recall is initiated, bar code is the link that assembles all the claim records. Many benefits throughout the product life cycle are possible through the use of a well designed bar code data collection systems.

The New York City Marathon is now a part of our sports culture, but in 1977 the organizers had a serious limitation to their event's ability to grow and satisfy the desire of tens on thousands of runners from around the world who applied to compete in this race. At that time only five thousand runners, a small fraction of those applying to race, could be registered and scored by the manual methods used by race organizers. That's when Fred Lebow, President of the New York Road Runners Club (NYRRC) who sponsor this classic race turned to bar code for assistance.

Since the adoption of bar code control, six times as many runners are now racing this major marathon, each confident that their finish time and position will be accurately recorded and formatted for accurate publication the next morning's newspaper.

The Macintosh OS and Newton OS users will find that their organizations, or even their clubs of hobbies, can use bar code data collection in hundreds of ways that let the computers and networks race through tasks that used to take wasteful time and effort. When you understand how bar code works and begin to use it on your Macs, you will wonder how you got along without it.

Copyright ©2001 Data Capture Institute, Inc.