Believe it or not, in this day and age there are many businesses around the world that continue to use laser printers for their barcode labeling needs. This represents a potentially huge untapped market for partners to sell today’s more effective and efficient thermal label printer solutions. There are many advantages that together make a persuasive case for any organization using laser printers for labels to change to thermal printers. Let’s review the most compelling advantages.

Thermal Advantage 1: No Toner

In both thermal processes, the imaging is embedded in the media. Any time you print with laser, you have to have a toner. There is no option to use some other printing method.

With thermal, if you have a low price point – a low cost target – you can go with direct thermal technology that has the imaging solution in the media. On the other hand, if you need a higher-end solution, you can go with thermal transfer. That ribbon gives you the option of high-quality printed images, but you don’t have to burden every solution with it. So there is flexibility in terms of cost and quality. With laser, there is no similar flexibility.

Further, the handling of toner and toner cartridges can be messy, problematic, or just plain frustrating. They demand special disposal because they represent a material hazard.

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Misperceptions about 2D imagers are changing fast, which is why 2D imagers are the fastest-growing category of barcode readers. Only a few years ago 2D imagers were (wrongly) considered a niche technology mostly used for reading 2D barcodes. Now they are becoming the technology of choice for most barcode applications, and lasers are on the way to becoming a niche technology. The reasons: 2D imagers are as fast or faster than laser scanners, can read all the same barcodes as lasers plus 2D symbols that lasers can’t, and can do much more.

Not only can 2D imagers read more barcodes than lasers – including QR Codes, Data Matrix and other popular 2D symbols – they can also do more than read barcodes. Imagers can take digital pictures, shoot video, capture customer signatures,
scan documents and even process the scanned data. These capabilities, which are outlined in the graphic below, enable new business processes that are not possible with older-generation technology. In an era where workers are tasked with doing more – collecting more information, providing more documentation, being more productive, etc. – 2D imagers provide more flexibility.

2D imaging technology gives businesses the two things they need most from their barcode readers: outstanding performance in today’s applications, and investment protection to meet future needs. This white paper is a guide to 2D barcode imaging technology, including an overview of capabilities and how 2D imagers perform in traditional applications, the beneficial new business processes that imaging enables, and the advantages 2D imaging provides compared to laser scanners.

Analyst Insight
“In 2008, laser scanners were the preferred handheld solution. However, the proportion of users planning subsequent investment in laser scanners is disproportionately lower than in other faster growing product categories i.e., linear and 2D imaging solutions. Imaging is expected to emerge as the fastest growing technology segment.”

VDC Research Group, 2009

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Introduction

In today’s fast-paced post and parcel industry, streamlined efficiency is more important than ever. Often times, however, the determining factors are out of our control.

Many of the most technologically-advanced delivery companies in the world still pick up a relatively high percentage of their items without prior knowledge of the destination or any other delivery element prior to taking physical control of the item.

When challenged, some of the most advanced companies in the world found “surprises” like these are accounting for as much as 10-25 percent of the items they are picking up. That is as much as 25 percent of their business they don’t know about in advance – meaning they can’t plan for downstream processes, in turn eliminating much (if any) chance to do dynamic network optimization or downstream labor planning. That also means as much as 25 percent of their business also requires someone to sit in front of a computer to manually enter the shipping details, including the delivery address, which they tell us can take in excess of one minute per package – ultimately costing millions of dollars each year. If they want any chance of advanced notice on the shipment and true tracking from the point of pickup, it entails having their most expensive resource, the courier, enter the data on their mobile computer. Our customers have found that these methods are not only time consuming, but very error prone as well.

And, due to decreasing work forces and overall increased productivity issues, delays and other shipping errors are further decreasing customer satisfaction. According to a 2009 Gallup Poll, the U.S. postal industry alone has lost $8 billion since 2007. In order to be successful in such challenging times, industry leaders must find ways to both increase revenue and reduce costs. To mitigate these issues, post and parcel industry operators are actively pursuing new technologies to help enhance profitability, while also increasing visibility and planning capabilities through the elimination of errors. New technology solutions may hold the key to solving this issue.

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The use of mobile devices has long been commonplace in retail stores across the globe. A recent survey by AMR Research/Gartner concluded that mobile store technologies will cover 72% of all retail locations during this year. Most significantly, the report added that the average number of mobile devices per store will grow from 4 to 16. In the UK, very few of the leading 200 retailers do not use any form of mobile device in their stores.

The benefits of using such devices in store have become simply far too compelling for retailers not to invest. The efficiency improvements and costs savings always result in an extremely rapid Return on Investment (ROI). Coupled with the need to offer an improved customer shopping experience to stay head of the competition, the arguments for investing in mobile technology are quite overwhelming.

The purpose of this White Paper is to explore the main drivers for this explosion of mobile technology and to provide a summary outline of the primary benefits from the retailers’ perspective.

Background

In a fiercely competitive landscape, retailers have been long driven to make every penny count, in a never ending quest to reduce costs and increase margins. Whatever the store environment, the same challenge persists, namely to maintain and manage stock to the optimum level. Since the introduction of commercial bar coding in the 1970s, retail items have long carried a globally unique number to track each item at either consumer or traded unit level. The first deployment of item tracking came in the form of installing scanners to read bar codes at the Point of Sale. This produced immediate productivity and efficiency gains by dramatically speeding up the checkout process, substantially reducing errors and providing an accurate picture of inventory.

These same speed and accuracy benefits apply when bar code scanning is integrated within a mobile device. Quickly after the first wave of the introduction of POS scanners, the benefits of item tracking were translated to track goods-in movements, perpetual inventory and replenishment by installing mobile devices with built in bar code scanners.

Handheld barcode scanner mobile computers started to appear in the retail store environment as early as the 1970s. Most retailers in the UK are now on their second, third or even fourth generation of mobile devices. The Handheld barcode scanner mobile computer is regarded as a mission critical tool which occupies a place at the heart of most progressive retailers’ store systems’ strategy.

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How Printer Choice and Other Variables Impact Wristband Quality, Positive Patient Identification and Medical Errors

The foundation for patient safety is positive patient identification, which begins with the wristband. Poor quality wristbands can lead to patient misidentification and medical errors. Poor quality wristbands can also prevent organizations from leveraging processes and tools for enhancing patient safety, including automated Five Rights checks, bar code point-of-care (BPOC) systems and electronic medical administration records (eMAR). By improving wristband quality, and improving the convenience of how wristbands are produced, healthcare organizations can improve the accuracy, efficiency and quality of patient care.

A wristband’s ability to enhance quality of care depends on the quality of the wristband itself. Unfortunately, wristband quality varies widely and cannot be taken for granted. Incidents of wristbands falling off or becoming illegible are not uncommon. Consequently, transcription errors and patient misidentification aren’t uncommon either. Wristband print quality will become even more important as bar coding becomes more prevalent in healthcare.

Wristband quality and consistency depend heavily on the print technology, printer model and wristband material used. This white paper highlights how these variables impact wristband quality, documents the links between wristbands, positive patient identification and patient safety, and provides guidance for wristband solutions that deliver accuracy, safety and convenience throughout the patient care path.

Why Wristband Quality Matters to Patient Safety

Wristband quality directly affects accuracy in patient identification. Patient misidentification was the root cause of 72 percent of adverse events according to a U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) Health System study.

A UK study found that missing wristbands and wristbands with incorrect information were directly responsible for 236 incidents and near misses in a 19-month period.

Numerous patient safety studies, organizations and government agencies have called for improving positive patient identification processes, often citing the benefits of bar code-based automated wristband checks. Despite some progress in this area and increased use of bar code medication administration, electronic medical records and other automated safeguards, there is still substantial room for improvement. In recognition of this need, the Joint Commission (JCAHO) made its top National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) for 2010: Improve the accuracy of patient identification. It has been the number- one goal every year since the NPSG program began in 2002.

The implications of patient misidentification are clear. For example:

• Medication errors harm more than 1.5 million people in the U.S. each year
• Hospitals alone spend an estimated $3.5 billion annually treating erroneous drug-related injuries contributing to unnecessary care costs
• There were 116 wrong-site surgeries, including surgery on the wrong patient, reported to the Joint Commission in 2008 (the last year for which data is available), making wrong-site surgery the most-reported sentinel event in 2008

Two thirds of blood transfusion errors are associated with incorrect recipient identification at the patient bedside.

There are several common wristband problems that contribute to patient identification errors. Leading problems include wristbands that are missing, damaged or contain illegible information. Sometimes wristbands are smudged or fade from the time they are printed. If bar codes are used, slight imperfections like these can easily make the symbols unreadable. Wristbands with no initial quality problems may become unreadable or fall off after several days of wear and exposure to common things like water, soap, alcohol and other sanitizers. Many of these quality problems and their causes are not readily apparent, but the medical error data previously referenced clearly shows some of the risks of poor wristband quality.

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Mobility in the workplace is growing exponentially all around the world. “Companies continue to expand their mobile workforces, as increasingly capable and affordable technology becomes available in the form of high performance handheld devices connected to faster and more reliable wireless networks,” states industry analyst J. Gold Associates. According to VDC Research, “The global mobile workforce is comprised of 200 million knowledge workers and over 500 million task workers.”

What does this business mobility look like? “More and more types of workers are working away from the home office,” says Sheldon Safir, director of marketing at Motorola, “and the whole reason is to increase productivity.” Field sales forces and workforces can be away from the office for weeks at a time. But mobility is about more than simply being out of the office. More workers and managers are also getting out from behind their desks and working where they’re most needed. Retail sales associates are helping customers in multiple departments throughout the store. Warehouse workers are constantly on the move around indoor spaces larger than multiple football fields. And there’s one thing these and other mobile workers have in common.

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Selecting the best available mobile printer for the direct-store-delivery (DSD) application is as critical as the mobile computer selection.

Rugged mobile thermal printers’ benefits over impact technology are significant and include:

• Smaller, more portable footprint
• Ease of use
• Reliability
• Total cost of ownership
• Battery life

By David Krebs, VDC Research Analyst

Direct store delivery (DSD) is a key method of selling and distributing products for a variety of industries and especially for high volume food and beverage products. DSD is a business process that manufacturers use to both sell and distribute goods directly to point of sale (PoS) or point of consumption (PoC) including additional product and market related services such as merchandising, surveying and data collection, campaign management or collecting competitive intelligence.

Mobile printing is increasingly central to any effective DSD solution as it saves times over manually creating invoices and allows drivers to spend more time on merchandising and sales. In addition, DSD operations leverage mobile printers to support on-demand printing of variable information and are increasingly personalizing the content for greater value add. Mobile printing solutions enable DSD drivers to create accurate updated orders, pick lists, delivery receipts, invoices, settlement reports and other documentation. In addition to the time saving benefits associated with mobile printing – printing can reduce time spent on invoicing by as much as two thirds – it also ensures increased documentation accuracy.

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A White Paper By Datalogic Mobile Inc.

Introduction

Mobile computers have become ubiquitous in the enterprise, from the warehouse floor to the boardroom. Thanks to advancements in processor speeds, reductions in cost, and the development of robust and reliable wireless local and wide-area networks, an increasing number of businesses have deployed mobile devices across a wide array of applications — warehouse management, sales force automation, field service, point of sale, and others.

Because mobile computers must, in many cases, communicate in real time with back-end business systems, the mobile operating systems (OS) on these devices play a key role in the successful integration of mobile applications with the wider corporate IT infrastructure. In the case of rugged or semi-rugged mobile devices targeted at vertical applications, the OS of choice has been Microsoft Windows CE.

However, over the past several years, new OS platform options have emerged from both Microsoft and other providers that have made the mobile operating system landscape more complicated. Since a mobile computing deployment can have significant security, productivity, and IT ramifications on the business, a careful approach to OS selection will help ensure a successful implementation and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of these devices.

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Executive Summary

Bar code systems help hospitals deliver accurate information in a variety of patient care and clinical settings, making them an important component in improving patient safety and process efficiencies. Therefore, these systems should be developed and executed with care, using dedicated printers that are optimized to provide reliable, accurate bar code output.

When hospitals evaluate their patient wristbanding solution, they often consider modifying existing laser printing systems to do the job. While many laser printers are capable of outputting bar codes, dedicated thermal printers are a more reliable, efficient and cost-effective option.

This white paper will explain the differences in thermal versus laser printing for patient wristbanding in hospitals and will provide an overview of the four reasons thermal printing is a better solution, including:

• Enhanced Patient Safety
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership
• Patient Comfort
• Ease of Use

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Executive Summary

To maintain accuracy and efficiency in warehouses and distribution centers, bar coding and radio frequency identification (RFID) systems are indispensable. Businesses can enhance these benefits by using mobile printers to produce and attach bar code and RFID labels at the point of application. Supplementing stationary bar code and RFID printing operations with mobile printers can reduce operator errors, streamline operations associated with labeling in inconvenient locations, and eliminate costs associated with correcting errors.

Using mobile printers to eliminate the distance that workers travel to pick up labels can boost productivity, often providing a full return on investment (ROI) in less than a year when used in warehouse, distribution center, and other industrial environments. The ROI is especially strong for facilities with existing wireless LANs, because a relatively small incremental investment in mobile printers creates new ways to increase efficiency, reduce operator errors, and leverage the wireless infrastructure investment.

RFID is an automatic identification technology that relies on radio frequency (RF) waves to read encoded digital data. RFID is similar to bar code technology in concept. Unlike a bar code, RFID does not require a visible tag or label to read its stored data.

This white paper shows where it makes sense to supplement bar code and RFID labeling operations with wireless and/or mobile printers by:

• • Identifying common operating procedures in warehouses and distribution centers that mobile/wireless printing can improve.
  • Illustrating how businesses can prevent common operator labeling errors by printing at the point of activity.
  • Providing real-world examples of how mobile printing systems have improved operations.
  • Presenting formulas and guidance for creating an ROI calculation.
  • Describing how mobile printers can be integrated with wireless LANs and batch operating systems.
  • Presenting an overview of mobile printing technology and capabilities.

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