Mobile Admission Ticket Printing
Industry Need
Fixed ticketing locations suffer from significant limitations when servicing peak attendance volumes. Limited processing points cause bottlenecks that severely restrict flow, causing delays and dissatisfied customers. This can create safety issues with excessive crowds congregating and limit event purchasing to a captive audience within a venue location. Adding stations requires significant investment without adequately addressing dynamically changing service environments.
Advances in mobile ticket printing have enabled users to overcome these limitations by moving ticketing to the point of activity. Taking transactions to the customer places processing points where they are needed most, increasing throughput and reducing wait times. However, this application is not without its challenges. Key requirements must be met for mobile ticketing success; these needs include media with appropriate durability, look and feel, speedy printing, and rugged, reliable equipment.
Continue reading »
Opticon introduces H22 Mobile Computer
Opticon presents new H22 with excellent reading and touch screen performance
The H22 uses the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5.3 platform, providing the latest technology for mobile applications. Users will be able to use functions and enterprise applications at any time – regardless of the location. The H22 is available with either an alpha-numeric layout or a complete QWERTY keypad.
The sharp 3.7” color display with touch screen is among the largest screens available for mobile terminals. It provides users with an extremely user friendly interface for any field worker application. The 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus and flash light supports visual information to any issue. Besides linear barcodes, the H22-2D model also reads 2D and stacked codes, both from traditional media (labels etc.) as well as from the screens of other mobile devices.
Medical Wristbands
Industry Need
Effective patient care is predicated on accuracy, but human error is exceptionally difficult to eliminate in the inherently high-touch medical environment. To address this, barcodes and automatic ID technologies are being used increasingly across a wide range of medical practices. Patient wristbands are one common application area. Intermec patient wristbands ensure positive identification for integration with verification systems for medication, samples, and surgical procedures.
The five rights of medication safety (right patient, right drug, right time, right dose, right route) provide an important framework for verification of pharmaceutical administration, but commonly rely on manual human checks. Integration of positive patient ID with barcode wristbands provides a highly reliable adjunct to eliminate human error. With increasing implementation of patient electronic medical record (EMR), scanning the wristband can trigger caregiver notification of allergies or other special requirements.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) has made improving the accuracy of patient identification a high priority, and it remains the number one goal in the pre-release version of the 2010 National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) for hospitals. Recognizing the accuracy enhancements of auto ID technologies, bar code verification is specifically cited as an acceptable alternative to resourceintensive two-person verification required for administration of blood products.
Continue reading »
IUID Item Unique Identification
In October 2008, the US Department of Defense published version 2 of the UID (Unique Identification) guidelines requiring a broad range of assets to be marked with a 2 dimensional data matrix code that is unique at the item level. Implementation is increasing, covering both new items and assets already in service. With an extreme assortment of surfaces and durability requirements, finding a product to reliably track these items can pose a significant challenge. Intermec’s comprehensive UID media offering simplifies this daunting task with proven labeling solutions.
Mission-critical tracking has been at the core of Intermec’s business throughout its history. Intermec media offers a number of products available off-the-shelf to meet UID requirements, and offer custom materials and configurations to meet particularly stringent requirements. Using these proven products and printing technology to satisfy UID requirements limits exposure and minimizes cost of complying with this mandate.
Integration of RFID Smart Labels for Third Party Logistics
Industry Need
Effective warehouse management involves the control and monitoring of movement of materials including receiving, storage, picking, staging, and shipping. The increased use of outsourcing these activities has given rise to the rapid growth of third party logistics or 3PL. 3PL providers typically specialize in integrating warehousing and operation services that can be scaled and customized to a customer’s requirements. The use of 3PL has become a cost effective way for many businesses to reduce supply chain costs and increase customer satisfaction. With any logistics process, opportunities for human error exist resulting in misplaced or mis-directed inventory. However, with 3PL providers handling inventory for a multitude of customers, high levels of accuracy and efficiency as well as visibility within the operation have become critical requirements.
Continue reading »
Horticultural Tracking
Application Description
Horticultural tracking requirements place special demands on labels and tags. Long days in the hot sun, sudden downpours, wild temperature changes, and soil and fertilizer exposure can quickly compost typical label and tag products. However, the efficiency gained by accurately tracking plants through growth, care, and distribution does not have to degrade with the changing seasons. Intermec has the products and experience to enable reliable identification of these items from initial growth through final purchase.
Intermec Solution
For trees, shrubs, and vines, Intermec offers nursery tags in a variety of sizes, colors, and configurations. These self-locking tags shrug off outdoor conditions, allowing identification of these growing items from initial growth to final retail.
For pots, stakes, planters and other outdoor items, Intermec offers outdoor-durable labels and ribbons. Adhesives and label stocks that endure outdoor exposure for a year or more survive for the entire growing season; highly aggressive adhesives offer strong bonds on difficult-to-label items or tamper-evidence for retail labeling.
With Intermec thermal printers, these durable labels and tags can be custom-imaged onsite to meet immediate needs in the quantities required, eliminating long lead times and costly obsolescence. Colorful pre-printing can add logos, full-tint color, or provide simple solutions for large production quantities that do not need variable print.
Healthcare Unique Device Identification (UDI) Labeling
Industry Need
The FDA’s developing UDI (Unique Device Identification) standard highlights the capacity of auto-ID technologies to enable significant improvements in patient safety. Quick, effective recalls and adverse event reporting are difficult with current medical device management systems, and UDI is targeted to drive major enhancements. Pushing traceability to the device level enables manufacturers and users to quickly identify, locate, and pull recalled units from service; connecting adverse events to a unit serial number can reveal failure trends previously missed with manual checks.
The FDA is developing the unique attributes with input from the GHTF (Global Harmonization Task Force) for Automatic Data Collection of the device’s lot and serial number to maintain a chain of custody record for the life cycle of the Medical Device.
Additional benefits to full implementation include accurate device usage data yielding improved maintenance effectiveness. Direct input of device usage into electronic health records can provide significantly increased accuracy of patient service history and billing. Selecting the correct printers and media help ensure UDI labeling delivers the intended benefits in challenging healthcare environments.
Continue reading »
Food Service Distribution
Application Description
The food service distribution industry has grown over the years to a multi-billion dollarmarket. The large providers typically ship to grocery chains, hotels, contract food service operations, healthcare facilities, multi-unit restaurant operations, just to name a few.
Both at the carton level and pallet level, items need to be identified and tracked through the distribution channel. Activities include order picking, batch picking, replenishment, and transportation.
Intermec offers a mix of products to address the requirements of this industry. With a selection of materials that comply compositionally with FDA 21 CRF, section 175.105 for indirect food contact, your customer can select from both direct thermal and thermal transfer materials depending on their requirements.
With a competitive price that compliments exceptional performance Intermec’s label offering ensures that food service distribution customers will have the performance they need for their supply chain requirements.
Intermec Advanced RFID Extensions (ARX)
Intermec introduces the first tag motion software toolkit in a standardized reporting format. Intermec Advanced RFID Extensions (ARX) effectively identifies RFID tags of interest and discriminates surrounding tags, providing customers and software integrators the tools to essentially eliminate false-positive reporting of tags.
Getting the Most out of RFID
RFID provides business benefits and a strong ROI for many applications including asset tracking, materials management, and inventory control. Many processes for identifying objects and recording their movements can be automated by RFID. Unattended readers ensure that asset and inventory movements are recorded and alerts issued if the material is moved to the wrong place or at the wrong time. With a well designed RFID system you know all the intimate details of where everything is, where it’s been and where it needs to go. By making your systems smarter, you will be able to:
- Realize huge improvements in asset and inventory visibility
- Resolve problems right when they occur
- Reduce capital and operations expenses
- Increase flexibility of your data collection systems
- Achieve new levels of productivity
RFID automated processes rely on the accuracy of reading the right tags: those that pass through a portal, are on a forklift, or are passing by a checkpoint on a conveyor. Because an RFID reader indiscriminately reads all of the tags that it activates, the presence of stray tags, such as those that pass through a nearby portal or are stationary on nearby racks or pallets, complicates the identification of the true tags of interest versus those that are not part of the process in action.
Continue reading »
E-Citation Printing
Industry Need
With increasing pressure on budgets, police and municipal operations are driven to increase productivity and revenues; citation programs pose a common target due to the high-touch environment. Adoption of e-citation among public safety agencies is rapidly increasing due to a quick ROI driven by increased accuracy, legibility (yielding decreased dismissals) and reduced or eliminated manual data entry. However, the ticketing environment has significant performance challenges. Hardware components such as computers or printers as well as citation media must often operate in punishing environments.
The two common E-citation applications have significantly different media requirements.
For parking and local ordinance violations, the citation must endure challenging service conditions. Vehicles are commonly unoccupied, requiring the parking enforcement agent to secure the ticket to the vehicle, often under a windshield wiper. These tickets are directly exposed to rain, snow, wind, and sunlight, conditions which can rapidly degrade common materials. Quick completion is a priority for efficiency; when agents encounter owners returning to a citation in progress, rapid execution is critical.
The time required to issue a citation is also important for moving violations. Drivers commonly complain about the time consumed when being cited. Additionally, exposure to moving traffic poses a safety hazard to both parked vehicles and officers, making rapid citation processing a top priority. While print quality requirements remain high, durability needs are lower since the printed citation is delivered directly from the officer to the driver.
