Barcoding News
Data tracking news, product updates, tips, and more
E-Book: The Move to the Omni-Terminal POS
With 90% of retail sales still happening at the store-level, it’s unacceptable for consumers to wait in long check-out lines, or hunt for a associate to ask about product availability. The integration of digital solutions is forcing retailers to transition traditional POS functionality beyond merely checking out customers. The omichannel world continues to change the breadth of retailing, and stores must learn to adapt.
Many retailers are exploring how to implement evolving business concepts as a means to stay relevant in an always-on business environment, they must move beyond traditional point-of-sale (POS) systems toward the next-generation “omni-terminal.”
Learn more about how you can transform the customer experience in this e-book
Finding Honeywell’s Vuquest Scanner In More Places Than You’d Expect
I took a Southwest Airlines flight last week and was delighted to see that they use the Honeywell Vuquest 3310g to scan boarding passes. So I started thinking – the humble Vuquest (2D Area Imager) doesn’t get enough press – probably because it finds itself inside things, or under things or behind things.
Below are just a few examples of where you’ll find the Vuquest. So don’t forget about it when solving your customer’s scanning problems. Thank of it as a Xenon in a smaller more compact, easily mounted form.
- Southwest Airlines. Scanning boarding passes.
- Law Enforcement. Electronic Ticketing / eCitation solution. Vuquest is inside the below device in the officer’s hand.
- One of the largest convenience store chains uses them inside their “loyalty kiosks” to scan loyalty cards. Kiosks are a classic use case.
- A European grocer with a significant presence in the US uses 3310’s at checkout to scan loyalty cards and in their self-checkout lanes to scan the final barcode off of mobile device used in their “scan as you go” application.
- A very large hamburger chain is putting the Vuquest into their in-store McKiosks.
- An extremely large online retailer that seems to be delivering packages to my house daily uses them to read bin license plates in their picking application and inside robots to read 2D codes on their floors for guidance in their warehouse.
- The 2nd largest grocery chain uses them in their pharmacies to scan bottles of pills and filled prescriptions. Another classic use case for the space saving Vuquest
- A large Midwest based vending machine company puts them in open unmanned vending kiosks to scan employee’s employee ID card.
For assistance learning how a Vuquest 3310g can fit your needs, contact us at BarcodesInc.
Track/Trace Solutions for the Logistics Supply Chain
Consumer satisfaction with the quality of your products is clearly important, but the service you provide before and after the sale is equally important to any business, but often overlooked as benefiting the bottom line. However, providing efficient tracking and tracing of shipped products enhances customer loyalty and your company image. Obviously, satisfied customers are a company’s greatest asset.
Track/Trace solutions including software and Automatic identification technologies such as barcoding and RFID are both reliable and effective in ensuring the efficient delivery of materials and components to you and to your customers.
According to Claes Fornell, University of Michigan, Ross School of Business and The American Customer Satisfaction Index, “As long as repeat business is important, and as long as customers have a chance to go somewhere else, employees must deliver high levels of satisfaction for a company to be successful.” In other words, satisfied customers often become repeat customers and one way to ensure satisfaction is to provide complete visibility from sale to delivery.
Simply stated, an efficient logistics supply chain accurately tracks and traces the delivered materials used to create finished products and then stores the inventory until picking, packing, shipping, and delivery of sold products are completed.
Buckeye Mountain Selects Janam XM2-RFID for its RFID Tag Reading Solution
Janam and Buckeye Mountain, a company that develops, deploys and manages mobile technology for the railroad industry, announced today that Janam’s XM2-RFID for Rail mobile computer is a recommended mobile computing hardware for Buckeye Mountain’s Automatic Equipment Identification (AEI) Quick Read application.
Buckeye Mountain has been designing, installing and supporting innovative solutions for the railroad industry for more than 15 years. With its focus on providing a customized approach to address customer needs, Buckeye Mountain works closely with Class I railroads to ensure they have a rugged and reliable solution to perform detailed railcar inspection and maintenance functions, as well as asset tracking. Buckeye Mountain selected Janam’s XM2-RFID for Rail mobile computer because its size, battery life, tag reading performance and computing power provide enormous improvements over what’s available in the market.
Zebra’s 3600 Series Sets a New Standard in Rugged Barcode Scanners
When it comes to capturing bar codes in rugged environments like the warehouse or manufacturing plant floor, every second counts—speed and accuracy is directly related to workforce productivity, throughput, and the quality of products and customer service. Zebra’s New 3600 Ultra-Rugged Scanner Series is the industry’s first ultra-rugged line of corded and cordless industrial handheld scanners that set new benchmarks for rugged design, scanning performance and manageability. The result is unstoppable performance—faster-and-farther-than-ever data capture, with unprecedented scanner uptime and a low total cost of ownership.
Ultra-Rugged Design
Just how rugged is the 3600 Ultra-Rugged Series? When it comes to industrial strength, nobody does it better. In fact, the 3600 Series offers the most indestructible design available today, with the highest drop, tumble and sealing specifications for comparable devices. All scanners in this family offer an 8 ft. 2.4 m drop specification that is 23 percent more durable than any other scanner in this class. These scanners continue to operate reliably—even after 5,000 tumbles. Also, only the 3600 family offers IP67 sealing as well as two sealing ratings—IP67 plus IP65—making it dust-tight and waterproof.
Superior Performance
When it comes to scanning, the 3600 Series simply shines. Built to out-class its competition in scanning performance, users get advanced scanning technology that enables the first-time every time capture of bar codes faster, farther and in practically any condition—under shrink wrap or damaged, dirty or poorly printed. With six models to choose from, there is a 3600 model designed to meet the specific scanning needs in a warehouse or manufacturing plant.
Barcodes Partners to Raise Awareness and Money for NK Benefit
Major depressive disorder affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older, in a given year. Additionally, there is one death by suicide in the U.S. every 12.3 minutes, which is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. for all ages. In 2013, the NK Benefit was founded to benefit the education of the Kurzawski children, who lost their mother Nora Kurzawski in March of 2009, as a result of suicide. The NK Benefit aims at raising awareness for depression-related illnesses and suicide awareness. Funds raised from the benefit go towards supporing suicide prevention organizations, such as Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE), and the Kurzawski Children Education Fund.
Barcodes partnered with Janam, Wasp, and Code to raise over $6,000 in support of this great benefit – making it the largest contributor for the event and really shows how we can make a difference in raising awareness for those affected by depression and suicide.
The giving does not have to end here. If you would like to support the NK Benefit please visit their website at https://www.youcaring.com/kurzawski-children-511887
Ensuring RFID’s Bottomline Payoff
Whether a business leapt at the opportunity to become one of the first suppliers with RFID tagged products or now finds itself currently being mandated to employ the technology, the implementation costs and the potential rewards are the same.
To maximize the benefits of RFID, it is critical to view its capability to drive business process improvement, increase supply chain efficiency and ultimately improve bottom line results. From this perspective, the up front capital costs for hardware, engineering consulting costs, opportunity costs, ongoing cost of tags and, in a manual environment, labor associated with the RFID tagging of products are deemed a necessary investment.
Rather than merely RFID tagging products to satisfy the requirements of their largest customers, companies can move from seeing RFID deployment as just the cost of doing business to an opportunity to enhance productivity and profitability. Understanding the impact of data collection and tracking as well as data integration is essential to RFID optimization.
“Lux” Explained for Barcode Scanning
The Granit user guide has a performance chart that says – “Granit 1980i/1981i Scanner Typical Performance (200 lux). So what is this “lux” thing?
Lux is the amount of ambient light in the area. A full sun, no clouds in the sky, summer day would be considered about 100,000 Lux. A completely dark area with no ambient light at all would be 0 Lux. A typical office environment is usually between 500 – 700 Lux. Granit scanner are used typically in a warehouse which are usually dimmer than offices. It would be safe to say that a warehouse would measure about 200 Lux of ambient lighting.
Honeywell: The Smarter Choice for Thermal Printing Supplies
Having some of the industries most popular and capable label printers goes hand-in-hand with premium supplies for them. From simple direct thermal shipping labels to rugged polyester labels for outdoor use, Honeywell has supplies to handle the requirements of the most demanding environments.
Honeywell genuine labels, RFID tags, receipts and ribbons support a broad range of barcode printing applications in mild to harsh environments. While a wide variety of these are offered as take-from-stock products for fast delivery, Honeywell will also customize the label material, configuration, size or any other feature to meet even the most challenging environment. Whether an off-the-shelf or custom solution, Honeywell has media solutions to meet any unique requirement.
To learn more about Honeywell’s selection of labels, receipt paper, wristbands, and RFID tags, contact one of our media specialists at Barcodes Inc.
Truth Serum for Deceptive Lending
Former small business owner and Heartland lending expert Damon Maletta has been an advocate for merchants seeking loans. He penned the article “What to Know Before You Owe,” reviewing and rating financing sources available for small businesses based on speed, transparency and risk. He also shared his own personal experience when trying to secure a loan as a business owner. His lending story is a cautionary tale on how to detect deception when partnering with a merchant cash advance (MCA) provider.
To add to his wisdom and excellent tips, here’s how you can avoid putting your cash flow and business at risk with an MCA. Be aware that hiding the true costs of their offerings and repayment terms is a reoccurring issue with MCA providers. Many will even modify the terms of a loan midstream.
