Uh oh—your barcode doesn’t scan—at all. Now what do you do? What to DO Here is what you don’t do—reach for your smartphone. If your smartphone also doesn’t scan your barcode you have learned [...]
There is a small set of issues underlying most barcode problems, but print gain is by far the most common. Print gain is the spreading of the barcode image in the printing process. There are many [...]
Making sure a barcode is readable is important. Compliance with the applicable ISO standard for barcode print quality is one way to ensure readability. How the data is formatted in the barcode is [...]
Recently we were asked why the important—and sometimes confusing—parameter Decodability appears in the ISO standard for 1D barcodes but not in the standard for 2D barcodes. Decodability is based [...]
The Importance of Barcode Quality Barcodes that fail to scan, or scan incorrectly are a nuisance and an expense. But the damage they do goes much deeper. Consider two recent FDA recalls. Case #1 [...]
Prevention comes from correction, to prevent the recurrence of everything you corrected. In reality, it’s more effective to consider the process variables and control them. Charting materials and [...]
The basic corrective actions for matrix barcodes are similar to those discussed in Part 2 of this series, which covers this topic for linear barcodes. You may wish to read that article, as we [...]
CAPA Part 2: Linear Barcodes You have a barcode problem. A press is stopped, a customer is unhappy, a supply chain is broken…it’s an expensive, stressful nightmare. You need a solution—now. [...]
Two different, equally-important factors define barcode quality: Print quality Data structure ISO Standards define print quality. For linear barcodes (parallel lines and spaces) it is ISO 15416. [...]
A thermal printing company requested our assistance with a mysterious problem—barcodes that intermittently grade well and poorly. They had a trusted verifier but their confidence was shaken. Even [...]
