How important is barcode quality? Here’s another way of looking it.

Enhancing Efficiency

Barcodes do so much more than just speed frontline checkout. But looking just at that moment, a lot happens when the barcode is scanned. In a fraction of a second, the scan looks up the price from a central database, ensuring the price is correct for that item. At the same time, it debits the store’s inventory and adds that item to a replenishment order. This data enables the store to track the item’s sales trends to intelligently adjust product reordering.

A largely unnoticed and unappreciated side benefit of central database pricing is the ability to adjust pricing quickly and cheaply. Remember when store personnel roamed the shelves with a handheld label gun, re-stickering certain products? That’s added cost to the sale price of every item on the shelves. Is that significant? Very! The net profit of a conventional grocery store is between 1% and 3%.

Saving the Planet

The quality of the barcode on most consumer products will soon be even more important, as QR codes replace the venerable UPC (~2027). In addition to fulfilling the database lookup functionality, they can include a link to a website that provides nutritional, allergy, and other health information about those products. Best use-by and expiration dates can also be included.

Barcodes on non-food items like clothing, hardware and electronics enhance value in other ways. The clothing industry is astonishingly wasteful, both in terms of materials and environmental impact. The textile industry generates 92 million tons of waste each year. Only 20% of discarded textiles are collected for reuse or recycling, and only 1% of clothing is recycled into new garments. A staggering 87% of clothing materials ends up in landfills or incinerators, contributing to energy waste and emissions.

Barcodes that work right can change the paradigm, not just by identifying the item, but also by identifying the materials in a clothing, flooring item, hardware or electronic item. This makes repurposing, reuse, or recycling much more accurate and cost-effective.

Saving Lives

Failure of a barcode in any of the preceding circumstances can sicken us directly, or sicken the planet and us eventually. Arguably, the most critical barcode quality usage is in medical devices. Just today, Today, FDA issued an Early Alert notification for a device with faulty circuitry. The barcode on medical devices support quick and accurate recall of those devices down to the exact date and location of manufacture, and even identify who has them.

Barcodes can have a full life-cycle role and relevance on every product or device they mark. No longer is it just an inconvenience when a barcode doesn’t work or doesn’t work properly.

Bad barcodes add to costs that are passed directly to us, and in critical applications, bad barcodes can even kill us.

On the bright side, barcodes that work right can help us minimize or even eliminate waste, making the plant safer and healthier.