Barcoding News

Otto ranks as the world’s largest mail order company and offers its products by way of two main catalogs it publishes each year, but also through numerous seasonal and special interest catalogs and via electronic media.

Otto’s core business is catalog selling. Therefore, access to a robust Warehouse Management System that allows the company to process return shipments effectively is of great strategic importance. Within this context bar code printing is of particular importance. For example, identification of an article that has been returned takes place solely using bar codes. This means that the printing quality of the bar codes is of the highest importance in identifying items that have been returned and managing all of the other related processes.

In 2001, Otto implemented a new and more efficient system for managing stock and returns. Wolf Hartmann is department head of the returns day shift at Otto in Hamburg. He decided to implement bar code printers from Zebra Technologies in Obertshausen, Germany. This brand of printers has been used successfully by Otto for many years and has proven to be extremely reliable. In addition, Otto was convinced that ZebraLink, the innovative method of connecting and controlling printers, could be of great value to their company.

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Preh has just announced two interesting glass-surfaced water-resistant keyboards with capacitive keys and four-levels of acoustic feedback.

The GTW 10  is designed for use in medical applications, can be operated while wearing surgical gloves, contains an integrated touchpad, and is resistant to acid(!).

The GTB 11 removes the touchpad, but adds dimmable blue backlighting. Though it’s recommended for the boardroom, it can also be operated while wearing surgical gloves (according to the photos).

It’s unknown how many keys can be simultaneously registered (hopefully enough for CTRL+ALT+DEL), or if the trackpad is multi-touch. It looks like it would take some adjustment to be comfortable touch-typing on these keyboards, but would make a buttonless trifecta alongside an iPhone and Magic Mouse.

Gallery after the jump.

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Barcode scanners from BarcodesInc feature prominently in the USS Enterprise bridge in the latest Star Trek movie

If you pick up a copy of Star Trek on DVD next Tuesday be sure to hit pause a few times during scenes set in the bridge. Chances are, you will see one of 8 barcode scanners purchased by Paramount Pictures from Barcodes Inc in the background.

If you don’t have the DVD, you can also find the scanners in many of the trailers and tv spots . The official Star Trek website contains a nice panorama of the Enterprise bridge where you can see all of the barcode scanners.

Here’s what you’re looking for:

Whether you need barcode scanners for the point of sale, inventory management, asset tracking, or to adorn the set of your 23rd century science-fiction action blockbuster, be sure to contact BarcodesInc!

More barcode scanner shots from Star Trek

A nice shot that includes each type of scanner

The scanners might be upstaging Kirk here

Good view of the Metrologic ORBIT MS 7120 face (far right)

Byggmax sells building materials and has premises at 27 locations in Sweden. The product range consists of base products needed for construction work e.g. timber, insulation materials, plaster and cement. They have a drive-in service, which means that the customers drive their cars into the premises and load the goods they require from the yard and the storage area, themselves. Byggmax staff register the goods in the cars, whereupon the customers are given a sales order to take to the checkout. It used to take longer, as the sales staff wrote down all items by hand on the sales order and made all calculations on a pocket calculator. At the checkout the items on the paperwork were registered together with those the customer wished to purchase from within the store. There were often problems with queues forming, when the checkout staff needed to enter all the items on the hand-written slip.

After a six month trial period of the new system, it has been installed in all stores. The sales staff at Byggmax are equipped with handheld computers and mobile printers from Zebra Technologies. The handheld computers always have an up-to-date item register and communicate wirelessly both with the checkout environment and with the mobile printers. The sales order is printed out for the customer within one or two seconds of the goods being keyed in. There is a bar code on the slip referring to the customer (usually the registration number of the car). The checkout staff only need to scan the bar code in order to take payment for the goods, which the customer has loaded into the car. If a customer leaves the premises without having paid, the registration number can be used to contact the customer.

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Retail Technology Review recently posted a review of the Datalogic Memor mobile computer.

So, if you are looking for a reliable, secure device that is feature rich and more than capable of satisfying all your core data capture and communications requirements in store and in the field, we recommend you further investigate this highly compelling new offering from Datalogic.

New Retransfer Card Printer—Superior, Photo-Like Images and Fastest Output

With Zebra’s new, high-innovation ZXP Series 8â„¢ retransfer card printer, now create on-demand plastic identification cards with superior image quality that meets your brand expectations and quality requirements. And do it with best-in-class throughput—up to two to three times faster than competitors’ brands thanks to Zebra’s patent-pending simultaneous dual-sided image transfer process—for increased efficiency in your operations.

What’s more, our new ZMotifâ„¢ XML-based software includes management tools to simplify and speed printer integration and custom project implementation. And the printer’s modular design, with a range of add-now-or-later encoding options, matches the printer to your market, application and future needs.

Print on one or both sides, even on smart cards and other uneven card surfaces, with this best-in-class retransfer card printer.

Challenge
One of America’s largest retailers faces a daily challenge of maintaining accurate pricing of all merchandise across its entire chain of stores.

Further complicating the task is that the prices of more than 1000 products change every week, and up to five percent of the company’s inventory changes in any given month. As recently as the early 1990s, these changes were sent via fax or e-mail and were printed out by store managers at each location. A night shift was required to print out appropriate shelf labels, canvass the store to put these labels on corresponding shelves, and manually update pricing information in the store’s main computer for the check-out terminals. For the average store, these tasks required 20 employees to work six hours after the store closed.

“Every week we’d forfeit nearly 20 percent of our profits from each promotion through the cost of setting up for the sale,” recalled the chain’s operations manager. “Even after spending all of this time and money, human error was nearly out of control. The price of merchandise on the shelf frequently didn’t match the price at checkout. Our customers were frustrated, which was compromising customer loyalty and company reputation.”

Solution
To correct these problems, the retail chain adopted a corporate-wide pricing network with frame-relay host-to-store communication; a wireless, 2.4 GHz frequency-hopping LAN in every store, and network addressable Zebra® portable mobile printers to move the operation onto the floor.

Today, the company uses a team of price checkers to update prices and ensure that shelf labels match checkout counter prices. Each price checker is armed with a small handheld terminal capable of scanning existing shelf labels and a Zebra portable mobile printer that wirelessly connects both devices to the store’s network.

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Challenge
During the holiday season, long checkout lines mean angry customers, decreased customer loyalty and lost sales. To keep customers in the holiday spirit, one of the nation’s largest discount chains tested a mobile checkout system to eliminate check-out lines, even during the busiest shopping days of the year.

“Even with all of our check-out counters open and our associates working as fast as possible, we still lost dozens of sales each day because people were scared away by the long lines during the holiday season,” commented one store manager. “We had to find a way to add check-out lines during our busiest time. Temporary mobile checkout was the only answer.”

Solution
For the store’s mobile checkout needs, the company turned to Zebra printers—the same brand of printer it relies on to label goods in its critical shipping and receiving operations. “We had used Zebra printers in a variety of logistics applications and they always worked flawlessly,” noted the company’s retail systems manager. “As a very public operation, our check-out operations system had to be fail-proof. Once we realized that Zebra offered a perfect retail solution, we never considered another vendor.”

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thedieline.com found some clever barcode art from Japanese firm d-barcode.com

Check it out:

Rugged, ergonomic mobile computer delivers new level of flexibility to businesses and government agencies

Motorola, Inc. announced the new MC3100 series of mobile computers – offering advanced computing power, industry-leading data capture options, enterprise-class motion sensing capabilities, and the most versatile form factor for mid-range mobile computing. The next-generation MC3100 provides enterprise mobility customers with a single, cost-effective in-premise solution for converged voice and data communications. In addition, the MC3100 leverages the ergonomic and lightweight rugged design of the category-leading MC3000, which has sold more than 750,000 units.

Designed for key-based and touch-screen applications inside the enterprise, such as price/stock management, inventory control, returns processing, shipping and receiving, baggage tracking and asset management, the Motorola MC3100 series of mobile computers is purpose-built to meet the demanding needs of diverse customer environments. With its robust features, the MC3100 mobile computer will help retailers, government agencies and distribution centers streamline business processes, improve employee productivity and enhance customer service and satisfaction.

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