This editorial in Integrated Solutions magazine hit home. Why are you waiting to add mobile technologies to your business operations? Do you use your smartphone for email, GPS, messaging?

These same tools easily adapt to automate your mobile operations. Why wait? Contact ADC today for a free Mobility assessment.

This article from DC Velocity highlights the growth of RFID in fast moving warehouse operations. Once upon a time, scanning a barcode was so much faster than a manual, hand-written operation that no one minded that a worker might have to get off a fork truck to scan items.

Today, things move so fast that even getting down to scan is becoming unacceptable. Passive, semi-passive and active RFID tags are more sensitive and can be read more accurately than ever before. New portal readers from companies like Impinj are making reading tags easier and more accurate.

If you’d like more information on how RFID might work in your fast-paced operation, contact ADC for a no-cost review.

Do you have an iPhone? A Blackberry? Read these comments from the editor of Integrated Solutions Magazine:

Armed with just about any new smartphone, personal users employ technologies that would make many small service companies jealous. Accessing a personal Word or PDF document is no different from accessing a customer contract, invoice, or product data. Scanning bar codes (1-D and 2-D) for retail savings or loyalty programs is no different from scanning bar codes on field inventory or installed parts. Watching a video snippet of a television show on YouTube is no different from watching a short instruction video or training tip. Receiving turn-by-turn directions to the mall is no different from using GPS technology to better route your field employees to customer sites.

The parallels could go on (e.g. text messaging, scheduling, appointment reminders, payment transactions), but the message seems pretty clear: We find the resources to put personal technologies in place, but we don’t always find the resources to put enterprise technologies in place. Well, if you’re a small to midsize company with field employees, the time to deploy enterprise mobility solutions is clear. It’s now.

A bar code symbol is made up of alternating lines and spaces. Combining these bars and spaces in specific ways is similar to using Morse code. Using Morse code to spell out SOS uses 3 dots (…) then 3 dashes (—) and then three dots again (…). A bar code is a “machine readable symbol” meaning that it can be decoded (turned back into number and letters) by any of several types of scanner. The bars and spaces are analogous to the dots and dashes.

Using only bars and spaces, a bar code can represent numbers or numbers and letters. When scanned by a laser scanner or imager the bar code returns a signal pattern that is then interpreted by the bar code reader; turning the symbol back into numbers and letters. Using bar code almost any item can be identified – part numbers, location IDs, packing slips, shipping documents, driver licenses – the list is endless.

A “linear” bar code is one dimensional; that is, the information is the same whether you scan across the top, bottom or through the center. There are also 2 dimensional bar codes which included “stacked” (many 1D codes stacked together) and “matrix” (a series of dots or lines. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) also represents a ‘type’ of bar code. The key to a bar code that is easy to scan is contained within the specifications for that symbology. Bar code specifications are the rules on how the bar code is to be produced. A device called a bar code verifier is basically a scanner with a small integrated computer; when you scan bar code symbols with a verifier it compares what it sees with the built in specifications for that symbol and returns a letter grade. A, B and C are acceptable, D or F are not.

Code 39 is used in many manufacturing operations including the automotive industry; Code 128 encodes information differently and allows more information to be compressed in the same space as a larger Code 39 bar code. UPC is used in retail; I2of5 is called Case Code and is often printed on corrugated boxes. Contact ADC Integrated Systems for detailed information on bar code symbols and printers.

“Consumables” for your inkjet printer at home include paper and ink cartridges. Consumables for a dedicated bar code printer (such as the Zebra ZM600 or RP4T and Datamax O’Neil I-series) include rolls of labels and ribbons. Bar code printers are thermal, meaning the printhead is heated to make an image.

In a direct thermal printer there is no ribbon; instead the labels are coated with a heat sensitive material and the printhead ‘burns’ an image into the coating. In a thermal transfer printer the heated printhead melts a carbon film ribbon producing a bar code symbol. Thermal transfer ribbons are only god for one pass and must be replaced with each roll of labels.

Another consumable item with a bar code printer is the thermal printhead. With good preventive maintenance the printhead will last a long time. However when not cleaned and adjusted regularly, or when using low quality labels, the printhead will burn out elements thereby degrading the quality of the bar code symbol. ADC Integrated Systems can provide you with bar code media solutions for any type of printer application.