Barcoding News

Challenge
Find an integrated solution that would allow us to have Web reservations and roving registration points, both for check-in and check-out.

Solution
Implement a Wireless solution that allows hotel agents to check-in and check-out guests, process credit cards, print receipts and program room keys anywhere in, or nearby, the hotel.

Product
Zebra Cameo PEP (Portable Encoding Printer)

Opryland Hotel Nashville, part of the Gaylord Entertainment Company, is the largest hotel convention center under one roof in the world with 2,883 guestrooms, 600,000 square feet of convention space, nine acres of indoor gardens, a quarter-mile indoor river, retail shops and restaurants. Over four million guests stay in the hotel annually.

Opryland, always actively searching for better ways to manage these high volumes of guests, has implemented a LANSA based Wireless solution that allows hotel agents to check-in and check-out guests, process credit cards, print receipts and program room keys at the curbside or anywhere else in or nearby the hotel.

The solution, LMS Wireless Express from LANSA solution partner Inter-American Data (IAD), has reduced queues at the reception desk and allows guests to check-in and check-out closer to where their room is.

Tom Xavier, director of front office operations, says, “Bringing together all the components of checking-in is essential to the success of this system. We are providing our guests with a fast, accurate, no-hassle service. Moving the front-desk functions to anywhere in the hotel is the key here.”

Challenge
John Eslick, Director of Strategic Systems Development Opryland, explains why Opryland felt a need to decentralize check-in procedures, “There were two main issues that prompted us to think about mobile check-in points. Firstly, when you normally think of a 3,000-room property you think of towers. We have only five floors and our rooms and facilities are spread out over a square mile.”

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About The Bargain! Shop
The Bargain! Shop (TB!S) is a rapidly expanding, Canadian-owned retail chain with over 250 stores, located mainly in smaller communities and neighborhoods across the country. It carries a wide range of brand-name quality products for the home and family: electronics, housewares, gift items, home textiles, food and snacks, health and beauty, cleaning items, as well as clothing and footwear for the whole family. TB!S’ pricing policy is simple: It guarantees the lowest prices, everyday.

Challenge
Savvy shoppers do their homework. They’re looking for the best value—quality products for the lowest prices. TB!S consistently meets those customer demands by offering brand-name products at the guaranteed lowest prices. Those in small communities and neighborhoods across Canada go there for the best deals on everything from toasters to cameras to children’s clothing.

That means TB!S must constantly evaluate and change pricing in order to remain competitive. The store stocks about 60 percent of its inventory with items that shoppers can buy from week to week. New, rotating items comprise the remaining items—made available as TB!S finds deals and passes them on to customers.

With thousands of SKUs, changing frequently, TB!S needed a flexible pricing strategy. Previously, store clerks consulted the service desk for prices, and then selected from pre-printed shelf labels. Those labels only included a price without a product description, which often confused customers about which items corresponded with which shelf prices.

When TB!S executive Clinton Wolff, VP & CFO with responsibility for IT, worked in a store for a day, he saw firsthand the inefficiency of the approach. “Customers had to ask about prices, clerks made more trips to the service desk to verify pricing, and checking inventory took longer than necessary,” Wolff said.

Solution
Tied closely with the company’s point-of-sale and merchandise management system, the system is currently in use in all stores. It includes a wireless access point, Motorola® MC3090 series mobile terminals and Zebra® QL 320 wireless mobile printers. The main criteria for a printer were ease of use, portability and durability.

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Challenge
Like other healthcare organizations, Sisters of Mercy Health System (Mercy) was concerned by the results of the 1999 study published by the Institute of Medicine, “To Err is Human,” which cited medication errors as the eighth leading cause of death in the United States. Administrators at St. Louis-based Mercy, the ninth largest not-for-profit healthcare system in the nation, suspected that any medication errors its hospitals experienced were less attributable to human error and instead more likely the result of inadequate internal processes.

Mercy decided to take a leadership role in reducing medication errors within its facilities. “We needed a way to help ensure that the right patient receives the right medication in the right dose at the right time,” says Curtis Dudley, executive director of optimization management for Resource Optimization & Innovation (ROi), Mercy’s supply chain operating division. “We believed most medication errors could be avoided by centralizing supply chain operations and implementing technology-based solutions such as bar coding.”

In response, representatives from a number of functional areas within Mercy, including nursing, the pharmacy, supply chain operations and IT, put their heads together to develop a more effective way to track medications throughout the supply chain-from the warehouse to the hospital pharmacy, nursing floors and, eventually, the patient.

Additionally, because pharmacists had to spend so much of their time checking that the correct medications were pulled from the pharmacy shelf, they had limited time to interact with physicians and patients. Mercy hoped that standardizing the pharmaceutical shipment process would enable its pharmacists to spend more time utilizing their expertise for patient care and less time on administrative tasks.

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The ZebraLink Smartphone Utility for iPhone®, iPad™ and iPod touch® devices will soon be available for download to your iOS device from the Apple App Store!

Features include

• Print a PDF or label template directly to a Zebra printer
• Retrieve and print files from the Web
• Take and print photos
• Connect to a printer’s Web page
• Check printer status

Motorola announced the MC959B mobile computer – the industry’s first industrial handheld mobile computer that allows mobile workers to easily select the wireless network that best meets their needs. The MC959B is a data-only device and offers a dual 3G WAN modem that enables enterprises to deploy the device on multiple networks and switch between 3.5G GSM HSUPA and 3.5 CDMA EVDO Rev A connections.

• The newest addition to Motorola’s premium-class MC9500-K series, the MC959B provides the flexibility enterprise organizations need with true WAN technology independence in the field.
• The new MC959B is one of the first handheld industrial mobile computers to incorporate Qualcomm’s Gobiâ„¢ connectivity technology – one of the first embedded mobile wireless solutions designed to put an end to connectivity limitations. The new MC959B via MAX FlexWAN enables enterprises to deploy and later re-deploy the devices on virtually any 3.5G network, simplifying purchasing and device management.
• The MC959B is the industry’s most rugged mobile computer and designed for mobile field workers – including those in the transportation and logistics, parcel/post, direct store delivery, field service and public safety industries – who work in large territories with coverage areas that may be best served by different cellular networks.
• Motorola’s newest offering delivers reliable performance and can be activated on the enterprise network of choice and switched between multiple networks to ensure connectivity throughout the business day.
• Designed to improve operational efficiencies with superior ergonomics, the MC9500-K series of mobile computers, including the new MC959B, offers an unsurpassed feature set in a sleek and reliable form factor for enterprises demanding the most versatile and rugged solutions.

Combination of Products Ideal For Mobile POS Applications

Star Micronics announced that its SM-S200 and SM-T300 portable receipt printers have earned certification from InfoTouch Corporation for use with the software vendor’s InfoTouch® Store Manager ES and Store Keeper POS touchscreen-based specialty retail point of sale software.

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The Omnii XT10 is an ultra rugged, handheld computer, targeted at demanding users, such as ports, airports, supply chain and logistics operations.

Psion’s Omnii XT10 comes with an IP65 and a 2.0m drop rating and due to the inclusion of the Texas Instruments OMAP3 processor performs up to two times faster than the competition on industry benchmarks. The superscalar architecture delivers parallel ARM instructions for better performance and better efficiency, at lower MHz. The Psion Omnii XT10 features extended battery life with over twice the capacity of comparable products and offers a battery health grade feature that warns when the battery is nearing the end of its lifecycle and allows users to get maximum value from the hardware.

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By Tim Walker

Thermal Transfer

• Uses a ribbon to transfer ink to label
• Crisper printing (important for barcode compliance)
• Long life span for printed labels
• Wide range of media material types
• Ribbon protects printhead, prolonging its usage
• Used when label is needed for longer period of time
• Used when label is required to be exposed to harsh environments

Thermal Transfer works by having the printhead heat an ink ribbon. The ink is actually melted and transferred onto the label where it quickly solidifies forming the desired image. Notice in the video you can see where the ink has been transferred from the ribbon to the label. Since the ink is actually bonded to the label, Thermal Transfer has the advantage of creating a more permanent image on the label. The images also tend to be crisper, making it good for high definition text and barcodes. Thermal Transfer is used in applications where the label needs to have a longer lifespan than Direct Thermal can provide or has to exist in an environment, like direct sunlight, that would cause problems for Direct Thermal. The ribbon also contains a coating on the back that helps protect the printhead, extending the lifespan of the printhead.

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By Tim Walker

The first concept we are going to look at is the difference between the two primary printing methods: Direct Thermal and Thermal Transfer. Both technologies have their advantages and disadvantages. Which one you chose is dictated by your needs. The good news is most barcode label printers, outside of the small desktops, have the ability to utilize both technologies.

Direct Thermal

• Uses special heat sensitive media
• Does not use a ribbon (advantage) but does not stand up to heat or light (disadvantage)
• Used for temporary labeling applications like shipping labels
• The chemical process that creates the image will fade over time

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Wavelink Corporation announced Wavelink® Terminal Emulationâ„¢ will be pre-installed on Janam’s XG100 rugged, gun-shaped mobile computers. As a result, Janam customers can easily deploy the market-leading software for connecting their mobile computers to host systems.

Through this exclusive agreement, Wavelink Terminal Emulation will be the only host connectivity solution pre-installed on Janam’s rugged XG100 devices. This builds on an agreement earlier this year between the two companies where Wavelink Avalanche® is the only device management solution pre-installed on Janam mobile computers. The partnership gives Janam’s XG100 customers access to a custom Telnet client, Wavelink Industrial Browser and Avalanche enabler.

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