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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Industry Need

Ensuring employee safety is a foundational focus of any world-class industrial operation. Fully functional equipment has well-documented procedures and robust safeguards in place to eliminate hazardous conditions. However, during installation and maintenance, significant additional risks such as exposed sources of electricity, mechanical force, or pneumatic/hydraulic pressure are encountered. These risks are mitigated by a well defined set of lockout/tagout policies. As a frequently cited OSHA violation in 2009, the importance of compliant and effective procedures to fully de-energize and communicate equipment status is underscored. Selecting the optimal printers and media to support lockout/tagout helps ensure success of this critical process.

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Industry Need

Modern life sciences commonly require long term preservation of biological material; cryogenic processing and storage provides a means to this end. With a large quantity of small samples in storage, accurate tracking is critical. Barcoded labels (with linear or 2D symbols) are the preferred method, but the extreme environmental stresses can cause failure with standard media.

Cryogenic conditions have become commonplace in multiple applications, ranging from pharmaceutical processing to lyophilization of vaccines. Cryopreservation of tissues and cell suspensions in small vials provides its own set of challenges, requiring conformability to small diameter surfaces and adhesion to low surface energy plastics such as polypropylene and polyethylene. Increasingly common cryogenic shipping of vaccines, tissues, and medicines in liquid nitrogen with temperatures as low as -112°F /-80°C now subjects a greater range of barcoded items to these stresses.

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Application Description

In 2008, the USDA Country of Origin requirements expanded in scope. By March 31, 2009, food manufacturers and distributors need to clearly identify national origin for many products and provide corresponding recordkeeping documents with each shipment. Mishaps in this process can cost time, money, and even valued customers. Users can now streamline, error-proof, and cost reduce this process with Intermec’s Country of Origin Labeling solution.

The Challenge

Meeting the Country of Origin requirement commonly requires multiple steps: A thermal printer images the national origin information on a shipping label, meeting the identification portion of the standard. A separate printer, typically dot matrix or laser, creates the packing slip to meet recordkeeping requirements; this slip is usually folded multiple times and inserted into a packing slip sleeve. Finally, this sleeve is manually matched to the corresponding carton (introducing potential for error) and adhered for shipment.

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Industry Need

Labels are commonly used to convey important information about the products they mark. However, an important element of labeling has become more prevalent: concealing inaccurate or out-of-date information previously in place. These kinds of labels can clearly communicate changed pricing without drawing customer attention, or may enable use of re-tasked or inaccurate packaging. Intermec’s specially designed Duratran and Duratherm Block Out labels provide this important function, reducing costs and improving efficiency.

• • Retail/Price Markdowns – When retail items need to be price-adjusted or product information must be modified, relabeling with a material that obscures the original information saves time and maintains the integrity of the original packaging.

• • Pharmacy/Unit Level Dose – On prescription items, labels are commonly applied over original packaging for distribution to the customer/patient. It is often important that the original printing does not show through. For reliable retail barcode scanning, it is critical to eliminate interference from underlying codes.

• • Warehouse/Logistics – In shipping and receiving operations, labels are sometimes applied to materials that frequently go through multiple use cycles. Shipping containers arriving in a facility can be reused to send materials to another facility by applying a new label over the existing label on the container. Previous information must not be visible through the newly applied label, especially in automated handling systems where it could interfere with routing of the container or carton.

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