When barcode scanners first became available, the task of inventory control and stock management changed forever. As revolutionary as bar code scanners were, advancements continue to change stock management.
Patented in the late 1950s the first stock and inventory management code was circular and described as a bulls eye. Surprisingly the first imagined use of the bar code was one that we all know today, the reading of product details at grocery store checkout counters.
Although speeding checkout and eliminating errors was the main reason for the development of the code, use in inventory management and stock control took the bar code under its wing first. That makes sense because product checked out in a super market must first be purchase, stored and inventoried.
The first use, commercially, for bar codes was in 1966 but because there had been difficulties during development, several competing systems existed. The retail grocery industry soon called for standardization before serious and wide spread use of bar coding could take place.
It took until 1974 before the first Universal Product Code (U.P.C.) bar code scanner showed up commercially in a supermarket. The first item to use a UPC product code was Wrigley’s gum.
From that point on, the use of UPC codes exploded, especially in any area concerning product or document transport and movement. Today almost every industry you can imagine has found a way to use UPC bar code scanners.
Some of the more imaginative UPC uses are as follows. Shipping containers, trucks, boats, courier packages, theater tickets, student standardized test scores, grocery store stock management, hospital patients, wounded or KIA soldiers all use UPC to track their movement.
Amazingly, UPC can now do much more than just identify position, quantities or type of items. These codes can now report the condition of stock because of sensors imbedded in the code stickers.
Previous UPC readers required a human to pass a laser light over the code in order to acquire the information in the code. There is now more advanced UPC that can use radio frequency to report to a central warehouse stock sensing unit automatically the details of inventory.
The future of item coding is moving towards physically smaller codes that hold much more data and are easier to read. If there is one thing that has been somewhat of a hold back for coding, it has been the necessity for straight-line reading to get information accurately.
In a way, item coding for inventory, stock control and the many other codes uses are in a “back to the future” situation at this time. Such a wide variety of new code types and features are in the process of being developed, many of which require special reading equipment, that standardization, once solved by the UPC system, is once again a problem.
What is certain is the fact that use of item coding saves money, helps prevent theft, controls item movement more efficiently and will always be with us. There are reasons for code to get smaller. There are needs for more information storage and retrieval, but systems need to be standardized. The cost of industry wide changeover to new coding readers is a problem that must have a solution. Then the industry can move forward and into an exciting and innovative, effective future.