Mobility

Civil parking enforcement officers use mobile barcode systems everyday.  When there is a violation to be ticketed, the officer enters the pertinent information and uses their mobile printer to print a ticket.  The ticket will have the vehicle name, license plate, violation details, date, time and a barcode.  When the owner of the car takes the violation ticket to the appropriate authority, a clerk will scan the ticket to log the information and record payment. Between the ticket being issued and the recipient paying it, information logged into the handheld barcode system will have been transmitted to a central server.  The clerk at the parking enforcement office will have accessed the server when scanning the ticket, thus completing the circle.  Should the owner of the vehicle ‘lose’ the ticket, the information is still logged into the barcode system and can be reprinted.

The same ease of mobility is useful in other areas of industry as well.  Warehouse employees with thousands of items to log and label with barcodes could utilize a mobile printer/scanner in a multitude of ways.  Barcode stickers could be printed on masse, or individually if there were mistakes or unique items.  Even duplicates can be easily printed.  Contractors performing services at multiple sites in a day could also make great use of the same kind of system.  After completing a job or selling an item the contractor enters the pertinent information and prints out an invoice.  No need for carbon copies or receipt books.

Verification

Some scenarios call for duplicate barcodes on separate items to be matched together at a particular time.  For example, in a large day camp, sleep away camp or daycare {setting|situation|scenario} where there are many children to attend to, it is important to keep special medical needs organized.  When a child arrives at the camp or daycare their medication is logged in a data collection system.  Two copies of a unique barcode are printed out, one is stuck to the medication bottle and the other goes on a wristband worn by the child.  When there is a need for the medication, a staff member scans both the wristband and the medication bottle.  If the codes match, the dose is given.  If the barcodes do not match, the medication is not the right one for the child.

Couriers and shippers use much the same kind of system.  A particular package will have a barcode assigned and labelled on it.  At certain intervals throughout the journey the package will be scanned and matched to a shipping log.  At its final destination, the package barcode must be verified according to the barcode on the courier’s shipping log.  If it doesn’t match, then the package is most likely in the wrong place.  Using the barcode verifies the travels of the package and provides proof of delivery after the fact.  For the rental business, barcodes are placed on inventory and scanned when rented out to clients.  When the item is returned, the barcode must match the system.  In the case of a sales representative, at any convenience store there are dozens of little cardboard trays of chocolate bars, gum, candy and mints.  A weekly visit from a confection sales representative could entail nothing more than scanning the barcode of the empty box to log fulfilment needs, and then physically replacing the sold product.  The information logged into the scanner is then used to create an invoice for the customer.

Security

ID cards are regularly issued to persons needing access to secure areas, from national defence bases to condominium buildings.  Some have photos, security features and computer chips; while others are nothing more than a blank key card used to open a hotel room door.  For every level of security, there is a kind of ID card to suit it.  Even visitor pass cards for secure areas have been around for a long while.  The fault with visitor ID cards was in retrieving them from the visitor after the appointment and preventing unauthorized use of the pass at a later date.  Now there is a state-of-the-art visitor pass which not only bears the picture of the visitor, a barcode containing information on them and the appointment, but also a time sensitive chemical reaction within the card that labels it as ‘VOID’ after a certain period of time.  When the card is printed and issued, a tab is folded back to initiate a chemical process resulting in ‘VOID’ appearing on the card.  The process itself is not new, but the ability to employ it in such an easy and useful manner is.

Barcode systems are really a lot more than just a bunch of thin lines grouped together.  They are holders of thousands of little pieces of information.  How that information is manipulated, extracted and used is what makes the barcode system so valuable.

Surprisingly (or not surprisingly depending on your point of view), dot matrix printers are still in use.  Many low-end or outdated cash registers still use dot-matrix printing, as well as institutions that require a high volume of invoice printing.  Since the paper used with these printers is continuous in length, multi part documents such as credit card receipts are easily printed with relatively little cost.  However even the dot matrix is slowly fading away.

Thermal printers are rapidly taking over the world of retail and industrial printing.  They work by heating certain points on heat sensitive paper to create letters and images.  No doubt if you have ever purchased gas or withdrawn money from a bank machine, you have received a receipt printed on a thermal printer.  This type of inkless printer is great for entities with extremely high volumes of paper being printed, as there is no cost for ink.  Another inkless type of printing being tested is the ultra-violet printer, which uses a specialised UV light bar to activate light sensitive chemicals on the paper.  So far the testing has shown the UV stimulated print can only last a maximum of 24 hours.

Of toner based printers the laser and inkjet are the most widely used both commercially and non-commercially.  Laser print technology was invented by a researcher at Xerox in 1969.  It wasn’t perfected, made network capable and marketed until 1972, but when the laser printer was made available it was first paired up with IBM hardware.  The laser printer was a true innovation of the time because it used a laser beam to project the printing image onto an electrically charged drum.  The areas on the drum hit by light instantly lose their photoconductivity, causing dry ink to settle.  Then the drum contacts the paper and uses heat to adhere the dry ink to the paper in the desired pattern.  The process was faster and much more crisp that dot matrix, plus there was a greater ability for hundreds of shades of colours.

The second toner based printer used quite often is the inkjet.  The inkjet has a pretty straightforward method of working.  It creates an image by propelling droplets of ink on the paper.  The whole concept was first developed during the 19^th century but was not really made commercially possible until Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Canon got involved (separately).  Continuous Inkjet (CIJ) is the oldest category of inkjet, and probably the most efficient in a high volume application.  Since the ink is projected at such a high speed, the printing pace is very fast.  Plus the nozzle does not become clogged, which is a common downside to low end inkjet printers.

The other two categories of inkjet are thermal drop-on-demand (DOD) and piezoelectric DOD.  Thermal DOD utilizes heat to cause a droplet of ink to form a bubble, which is then propelled on the paper.  As one might guess, this is the type of printer Canon liked to call Bubble Jet.  Piezoelectric DOD is most commonly used in commercial and industrial applications.  The technology is much the same as thermal DOD, except the print heads are made from piezoelectric metal containing lead zirconium titanate.  These types of print heads are more conducive to many different kinds of inks and almost never become clogged up with ink residue.  All those little expiry and ‘best before’ dates shown on perishable foods are printed with a piezo DOD inkjet printer, as well as barcode labels, event tickets, inventory control labels and so on.

Solid ink printers began their life with Tektronix in 1986.  Printing is carried by heating the end of a solid stick ink enough to produce letters and images on paper.  The first versions of solid ink printers used ink sticks made from food-grade vegetable oils; however when Xerox took over Tektronix the formula changed.  Solid ink printers are very popular in offices for a variety of reasons.  The print quality is excellent, even on recycled paper.  The speed at which the first page can print from a solid ink printer is faster than any other, and there is far less wastage than other kinds of printers.

Every printer has its perks, but there is no point in having a state of the art printer for your business if there is no computer powerful enough to handle the software.  It is kind of like putting the horse before the cart.  If your business is at a point where a highly manipulative inventory control system is becoming a necessity, seek out a whole system approach.  The initial expense may be a little more, but the time and money saved in the long term will be well worth it.

The beginnings of RFID lie with Soviet inventor Leon Theremin.  Shortly after inventing the first electronic musical instrument, he came up with “The Thing”.  It was a covert listening device that used radio waves to transmit sound.  The same technology used by Theremin was applied by British pilots as a means of identifying airplanes as friendly or from the enemy, illustrating just how far the radio waves could be transmitted.  It was the perfect setting, as there were few obstructions in the sky.  Theremin came up with the idea for The Thing as a tool for espionage during the Second World War.  He encased the listening device in a wood carving replica of the Great Seal of the United States, which was then placed in the US Ambassador’s home office in Moscow.   Soviet officials listened in on many confidential discussions during the first few years of the Cold War, thanks to The Thing.  At the end of World War II, The Thing was presented by the USSR to the US Ambassador as a gesture of peace.

Transmitting information via radio waves was all well and good (and certainly useful), but it wasn’t until 1973 that a radio transponder with memory came about.  Mario Cardullo’s device showed investors worldwide the opportunity for use in transportation, banking, security, and medical uses.  Now radio-frequency identification as we know it in the 21^stcentury was born.  Yet there was no sudden spike in usage by large corporations of government entities.  The distribution of this new RFID into the market was steady, but not as prolific as one might expect.  Costs of implementation were high, and reliability was not consistent.

Then three things changed the usability of RFID.  Through the 1980’s barcode technology was being adopted globally, which spurred an international standard for Ultra High Frequency (UHF) electromagnetic waves.  With the new standards, RFID had a chance to become more internationally usable.  In 2010 the cost of raw materials decreased, resulting in equipment and tags being cheaper.  Plus, tweaks in the technology itself resulted in a {radical|huge|drastic} increase in reliability of signal and data transfer.  Now RFID was far more practical and affordable to be used on small and large scale applications.  The largest user of RFID to date, at least in one active deployment, is the US Department of Defense, but the largest passive use goes to mammoth retailer Wal-Mart.

Today we can find RFID in use everywhere.  Toll roads in nations around the world use RFID for a faster payment method, resulting in smoother traffic flow.  Singapore put in place an RFID season parking ticket system in 2007.  Car-sharing services use RFID as a means of securely unlocking vehicles for their members.  Large equipment manufacturers and dealers use RFID for inventory management.  Public transit companies all over the world provide RFID based passes and payment cards for their users.  Office and residential buildings have put RFID door passes into use as a way to protect the security of the building.  In 2005 Las Vegas casinos began putting RFID tags in their high end chips to help combat counterfeiting.  Additionally, they track the betting habits of players and are able to spot counting mistakes by dealers.

The power of RFID lies in its reliability, accuracy and universal acceptance.  All of these benefits translate into major time and money savings, most especially for the largest players on the block.  For example, in 2005 Wal-Mart required their top 100 vendors to apply RFID tags to all shipments.  While the measure ended up causing more trouble than it was worth, the power of RFID was clear.  Wal-Mart logistics executives saw the pre-2010 RFID technology as the answer to a lot of coordination and inventory management headaches, and they had the volume to make the request to their vendors.  Unfortunately the shipping and logistics world was not ready for RFID on such a large scale.  Another five years and it would have been a different scenario.  Today we can find RFID technology in use everywhere, and it behooves any business to incorporate it into their operations.  The technology is ready; the business world is ready, now it’s your turn to bring in the latest RFID equipment.