Let’s start a little from history and necessity. With the increase in the number of products in a warehouse there is a very high possibility that employees who choose products for logistics operations will confuse the products.
This is due to the fact that the only identifying element at that time (and now there are such situations) was the name of the product, the company that delivers it, weight, shape, etc.
The operation of evidence and the management of products became very complicated. Computers had appeared; a way had to be created for the computer to read the products quickly.
Initially, some barcodes were assigned to the products to be identified in the computer system. Reading numbers in their written format were and still is problematic for computers. This operation is called localization and involves software converting text from a physical medium into electronic information. You should buy barcodes for your business and managing product inventory.
This precedent gives errors if the numbers or the text is deleted or dirty, etc. That’s why some codes have been created in digital format that can be easily read by the computer using a scanner (a device that is able to read barcodes).
A barcode looks like you see in the next image and is a succession of vertical black and white bars of various thicknesses.
Black lines and white spaces represent sequences of 0 and 1, i.e. a text written in binary. The scanner does nothing but converts lines and bars to binary code and transmits it to the computer that converts it to text.
Barcode types:
UPC barcode
The UPC code is a code used mainly in the USA, but also in Great Britain, New Zealand, etc. It has 2 variants:
-UPC-A with 12 digits and
-UPC-E with 6 digits. S
E is used for coding products for reading at points of sale. The UPC-E code is used to label products that are smaller in size and on which a UPC-A code could not be applied.
EAN barcodes
The EAN 13 barcode is actually a upc ean barcode, but it also has a digit added. This digit allows location (usually a country code). It is mainly used in Europe, being the adoption of UPC for Europe.
It is also used to identify products. There is also a shorter version of EAN 8 that has only 8 digits, and the principle is the same as the UPC-E code. It has several variants: EAN 8, JAN 13, ISBN (for books), ISSN.
QR code
The QR code is an array type, easy and fast to read with the help of camera scanners. These types of codes cannot be read by regular scanners (i.e. those that use lasers for reading). This code has started to grow in notoriety in Japan and continues to grow in notoriety with each passing day due to the fact that it can store a lot of information. There is also a shorter version of EAN 8 that has only 8 digits, and the principle is the same as the UPC-E code.
Conclusions to stay with:
- there are several types of barcodes that can be used in various industries;
- each of these barcodes can store more or less information;
when you choose which barcode you use you have to think about how much information you store in it and with which scanners it will be scanned.
