Barcode Quality: Important but Unexciting

Comments from our testing clients show that the most important work we do is remarkably unremarkable. Unexciting but essential. Looking back on decades of work in barcode quality and compliance, and dozens of clients, our history bears this out. The regular, monthly clients depend on us to keep it that way. Excitement is not a good strategy for building and maintaining a stable, growing business, your business.

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Excitement is not a Sustainable Business Strategy

A recent re-visit from a longstanding client is a good example. The package of label samples arrived, and, as usual, testing began promptly. Verification reports were generated on 25 labels within about an hour. The samples graded well; the discipline the client learned from years of testing and tweaking was once again corroborated—with one concerning revelation. All three batches of labels tested well but one batch had visual evidence of failing thermal print head pixels.

If you relied just on the verification reports, you could have missed it. The grades weren’t quite as good as the other batches, but good enough not to notice. But we did notice and alerted the client to the problem which would surely get worse.

Care enough to Ask

Barcode quality and compliance testing are what we do, but verifiers are not the only tools we use. The other tools are communicating and caring. Here are some examples of what we mean by communicating:

• If the client doesn’t identify their barcode samples for a particular standard, for example as healthcare bedside usage, or secondary packaging for logistics, we ask. It makes a difference in how the verifier is configured.
• We ask clients to uniquely identify each sample they send us, so we can likewise identify the verification report to that specific sample. It seems a minor point, but it’s important.
• Even when the samples grade well, we always point out opportunities making those good grades robust. For example, when graphics are positioned close enough to violate quiet zones if the print gain increases.
• When barcodes are smaller than necessary on a label, the print tolerances are needlessly exacting. We suggest making the X dimension larger to make successful printing easier. Likewise, when the barcode barely fits the label, it makes positioning he barcode on the label needlessly demanding, to avoid violating quiet zones. We point this out to the client. We also point out needless truncation and encourage them to leave linear barcodes at their full specification height.

Explain and Educate

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Of course communicating starts with caring, but there are some other aspects of caring that are also important:
• Explaining the verification report, parameter-by-parameter, helps the client understand how to improve their printed barcodes.
• This naturally provides clients a way to fingerprint their printing process and make good results repeatable.
• Our testing product isn’t just a verification report. We encourage meeting with the client’s team to explain the verification report, discuss opportunities for improving the grading and Q & A with them.

Besides our repeat clients, we have a steady population of clients that start with us, stay for some period of time and eventually acquire their own verifier. It is a natural, logical step. Some buy the verifier from us. We are grateful for their trust, and the opportunity to earn it.

Questions or comments? Contact us here.