BARCODES 101 JOHN NACHTRIEB TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

How do you know your barcode will work? 2

The Present and Future of Barcodes 4

What Are Barcodes and Why Do They Exist? 7

The Ultimate Symbology 9

Barcode 101: Where Did Barcode Technology Come From? 12

Barcode Verifier Types 16

About The Author 19 This Page Is Intentionally Blank INTRODUCTION

Barcodes are the connective tissue in supply chains and trading partner relationships in a wide spectrum of markets. Important as these supply chains are, barcode quality is often ignored until a crisis occurs: supply chains are disrupted, orders are late or incorrect and trading part- ners’ confidence is damaged. BARCODES 101 provides a basic, broad overview into barcode quality from a layman’s perspective, building a solid, logical foundation for understanding not only how important barcode quality is but also how it works. When barcodes first burst onto the scene in the mid 1970’s, they were used only for transactions in the consumer space for inventory tracking purposes. When barcodes didn’t work right, it was nothing more than an inconvenience and a problem for the customer experi- ence. But barcodes have moved into much more critical roles, providing supply chain security from the infiltra- tion of counterfeits into the pharmaceutical and medical device supply chain, access control to sensitive facilities, airline safety via barcoded boarding passes, and a myriad of other uses. As barcodes have been adopted into these critical roles, barcode quality has become ever more important and the liabilities associated with poorly performing barcodes are ever greater. I hope you find this booklet both interesting and helpful.

Barcodes 101 | 1 HOW DO YOU KNOW YOUR BARCODE WILL WORK?

Whether it is your barcode on your product, or the barcode you printed for a customer, you know it should work right. Well maybe you don’t know that yet, but if something goes wrong, soon enough you will know and it will be a memorable experience—one you do not want to relive. How do you find out if your barcode is good? The most obvious answer would be to scan it. Scan it with what? How about your smartphone? What about a scanner? What would that tell you if, for instance, the barcode did not scan? Not much. Taking it a step further, what would it tell you if your smartphone or scanner did successfully scan your barcode? That question requires a bit more consideration. Let’s start with the basics: what is a scanner really? Whether it is a smartphone camera or a purpose-built barcode scanner, the intent is to decode the barcode. Most scanners signal a successful decode with a “beep”. Smartphones just display some relevant information if the barcode scans. Think about that—the barcode decoded something. Do you know if it decoded correctly? Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Let’s get back to the scan failure situation. Does a smartphone or scanner give you any indication of why the barcode failed to scan? No—all it did was not “beep”. These two CD labels were printed two-up at the same time, yet the top barcode fails and the bottom barcode passes with an ANSI A grade.

2 | Barcodes 101 Here is the BIG question: with an apparently successful scan (when the scanner “beeps”) how reliably does that result predict that the same thing will happen on somebody else’s smartphone or somebody else’s scanner? That smartphone OS could be Nokia, Palm, HP Web, iOS, Symbian, Android, Windows or Blackberry, built virtually anywhere from parts sourced from virtually

Barcodes 101 | 3 anywhere. The scanner could be laser, CCD or camera— we’ll omit LED or wand scanners since they are pretty much obsolete. The BIG answer is, you have no idea if the apparently successful scan was indeed successful, and you have no way of predicting whether or not that same barcode is going to “beep” on anybody else’s smartphone or scanner. This gets us back to the original question—then how do you know your barcode will work? The only way to reliably predict barcode performance is to test it against a known and internationally accepted standard that defines the quality of its various characteristics—things like reflective differences between the bars and spaces and the reflective consistency of the symbol and its background. Even when you do that, there is no guarantee that a good barcode will work everywhere and a bad barcode will work nowhere. So then why bother to test barcodes at all? Because there is significant potential liability when barcodes fail. When your barcodes comply with the international standard but fail somewhere, you have a strong defense protecting you from that liability. Scanners that don’t “beep” for a good barcode are often found to be malfunctioning, damaged or defective. If that barcode is on your product or you printed it, that’s a problem—but not your problem. Smile!

4 | Barcodes 101 THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF BARCODES

Since their initial use in grocery checkout, barcodes have entered into an amazingly broad range of uses, including: • The full spectrum of consumer retail goods

• Manufacturing process tracking (WIP) of everything from light and heavy equipment and vehicles, appliances, subassemblies and parts

• The movement of all of the above in supply chains

• Access control of all sorts including buildings, sports events, concerts and performance events, train, aircraft and cruise ship boarding, private parking lot or community access

• Coupons, gift cards, drivers licenses, package tracking, postal envelopes and packages

Barcodes 101 | 5 • Drug manufacturing and medical device security including anti-counterfeiting and freshness/expiry systems

• Asset tracking systems in businesses, schools, hospitals, etc. including tool room check-in/ check-out

• Electronic records storage and retrieval

• Matching systems in packaging lines, drug dosing, postal fulfillment

• Lifecycle identification of critical parts and assemblies such as engines, weapons and other systems and major subassemblies

• Apps for mobile data acquisition via marketing pieces using QR Code Please comment if you know about other ways in which barcodes are being used. How will barcodes be used in the future? Perhaps the first question is, will barcodes be used in the future? The demise of barcode technology has been predicted for a long time, during which time we have seen barcode adoption expand—not diminish. The above list of new and innovative uses is evidence of the expansion of barcode usage. The AIM trade association and the AIDC 100 organization do not see barcodes being replaced any time soon. While other technologies, most notably RFID, have the ability to perform the same functions as barcodes, nothing so far matches both the utility and the cost-effectiveness of barcodes for many if not most

6 | Barcodes 101 of its current usages. Furthermore, there is no whole- cloth necessity to “replace” barcodes when they work so well in conjunction with RFID and other automatic identification technologies. RFID will replace barcodes where it makes functional and financial sense to do so; barcodes will continue to do what they do best. Besides RFID, what other technologies are emerging that may also have roles to play alongside of barcodes? Vision systems and recognition systems are not likely to replace barcodes because they cannot isolate individuals of the same generic type—for example, one banana from another; nor can they distinguish expiration dates, batch or lot in case of a recall. Electronic watermark systems such as Digimarc and other covert marking systems, while they may replace visible barcoding as we know it, do not replace the need for the added cost of a special printing process and the additional time and handling required for line-of-sight scanning. Specially enabled scanners are also required. Back to RFID technology for a moment, which has also been advancing. Printed electronics is showing lots of promise in making chipless RFID much less expensive. Not to be confused with printed circuit technology which is actually a subtractive, chemical etching process, printed electronics is an additive process, adding circuitry and multilayer components using special conductive and semi-conductive inks to a non-conductive substrate such as paper. How cheap can chipless RFID be? Probably not as cheap as a square inch of ink for a barcode—but it’s not just about the cost of ink: that square inch of space can be pretty expensive real estate.

Barcodes 101 | 7 WHAT ARE BARCODES AND WHY DO THEY EXIST?

Jerome Swartz, former CEO of Symbol Technologies is credited with having defined barcodes as “…portable, disposable memory.” Someday I hope to confirm or refute that in a conversation with him, but if I were Mr. Swartz, I would take credit for it—it’s a great definition. A barcode accompanies an object, which could be a product for sale, a part or subassembly in a manufacturing process, a package, substance or device whose movement must be tracked and controlled, a document which must be archived and retrieved, an access control key-card, a marketing piece with a website link…the applications where barcodes have utility are still being discovered and the possibilities are limited only be our ability to conceive of them. While the preceding paragraph pretty well answers the question posed by the title of this article, the story of how and why barcode technology was created and rose to these challenges is a fascinating one. The rationale most of us know about is a good place to begin: the grocery store, which is in fact the place where barcode technology was born. A consortium of grocery manufacturers heard about Woodland and Silver’s invention and recognized its potential. Kroger

8 | Barcodes 101 volunteered a Cincinnati store to test the feasibility, and the rest is history. This is a literal example of Mr. Swartz’s definition: the proliferation of new products was making it impossible for a grocery checker to remember the SKU code for every item. The grocery manufacturers were also concerned about losses due to the high rate of keying errors. Coincident with solving grocery industry problems, the proliferation of scanning stores also introduced barcode technology to a vastly wider audience, including the US military and automobile manufacturers, who recognized the potential for solving some of their own logistical and process challenges. The special requirements of some of these early adopters led to the development of new barcode symbologies that could do things the UPC symbol could not--for example, encoding alphanumerical data. A special symbology was developed that could successfully survive the low contrast and undulating surface of corrugated shipping containers. Now, barcodes could be described as the glue that holds whole supply chains and security systems together. Although the internet enables trading partners to transact, track and secure the movement of goods on a global scale, it is still the lowly barcode that makes it work. I believe that Jerome Swartz gave us the best definition of barcodes—they are indeed portable, disposable memory. But the range and scale of what barcodes are doing in today’s world was beyond anyone’s imagination, and I believe there are uses for barcodes yet to be discovered.

Barcodes 101 | 9 THE ULTIMATE SYMBOLOGY

In our recent article Why Are There Different Kinds of Barcodes? we posed the question (rather rhetorically) “...isn’t there one symbology that could do it all?” As a matter of fact there is a new symbology that is moving in that direction. It is called Ultracode. A draft of the international technical specification is completed, the symbol generator software is available for Windows 7 and 8 along with instructions and release notes, symbol test files are available, and a public review period ended late last year.

Sidebar: The usual path for the adoption of a barcode symbology into an open loop system starts with research and standardization by the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility (AIM), a trade association in the AIDC industry. This is how UPC, Code 39, Code 128 , PDF417, Data Matrix and QR Code became part of the library of symbologies used today. Let’s be clear: Ultracode is not the …”one symbology that could do it all.” But Ultracode is proposed to be the symbology that will do what is next. Consider this:

10 | Barcodes 101 • The largest selling barcode scanner on the planet is not a scanner—it is the smartphone

• Smartphone camera resolution is equal to and often better than many industrial 2D scanners

• Many barcode applications are moving to 2D symbologies

• 2D symbols are more size efficient and have error correction not available in 1D barcodes

• Smartphones are increasingly used as data carriers

• Smartphones are replacing printed airline boarding passes, event tickets and access control But printed 2D symbols are predominately designed for black on white printing, and do not utilize the full capacity of smartphone color displays and color cameras (all smartphone cameras since 2010 are color). The confluence of these factors has created an opportunity to take advantage of color as a new means of encoding information, which gives Ultracode a significant technical advantage over Data Matrix and QR Code: Using color, Ultracode can encode more data in a smaller space and it can provide greater error correction capability. Ultracode is similar to QR Code in that it uses the same Reed-Solomon error correction methods and user-selectable levels of error correction. Like QR Code, Ultracode also has an interior finder pattern and a required perimeter quiet zone. But Ultracode is much more efficient than QR Code at encoding a URL, because

Barcodes 101 | 11 it can encode common URL phrases such as http://www/ with a single codeword. For a typical URL symbol of a similar error correction level, and using the same module size, Ultracode uses 46% of the area of a QR Code.

The QR Code and Ultracode below both encode https://aimglobal.org/jcrv3tX

What’s Next The AIM Board is scheduled to vote on publication of the specification for Ultracode at its Annual Meeting at the AIM Summit in San Diego in April, 2015

12 | Barcodes 101 BARCODE 101: WHERE DID BARCODE TECHNOLOGY COME FROM?

Like most innovations, barcode technology started with a problem looking for a solution. Unlike a lot of solutions, barcode technology wasn’t possible without the existence of a solution that had not yet found a problem it could solve. That solution was the laser—but I’m getting ahead of myself. The nearest thing to a barcode as we know it was the invented by Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland, and for which they won a patent in 1952. Instead of a picket- fence pattern of bars and spaces, the Silver-Woodland barcode was a pattern of concentric rings not unlike a bull’s-eye. Circularity allowed omni-directional scanning, which was to be done with an electro-mechanical device also described in the patent. Unfortunately the circular pattern was difficult to print accurately, and the scanning device was not feasible, so the barcode solution went nowhere for a few years. A few years later, in 1959, David Collins was looking for a way to automatically identify to railroad cars for his employer, the Pennsylvania Railroad. His system, called

Barcodes 101 | 13 Kar Trak, was a barcode- like pattern of red and blue reflective stripes, encoding a company and a car number on the sides of the railroad cars. Economic factors and decoding problems due to dirt on the railroad cars conspired to kill the concept, but Collins saw the need for automatic identification gaining strength in other applications. A few years earlier, Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow at Bell Labs had been working on microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (Maser) but, in 1957, Gordon Gould, a graduate student at Columbia University, realized that the concept would work better with short wavelength visible light, and invented light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (Laser). Stimulated emission was a process first described theoretically by Albert Einstein in 1917. Re-enter David Collins, who formed Computer Identics Corporation in 1967 and began working with lasers instead of heavy, heat-producing photo-multipliers to decode black and white barcodes. Computer Identics installed its first scanning system at a General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan in 1969, identifying transmissions on a moving conveyor line. By this time, the U.S Postal Service was investigating the use of barcodes to track vehicle movement in their facilities, and pet food manufacturer KalKan was looking for a cheaper and simpler way of controlling inventory.

14 | Barcodes 101 These developments caught the attention of the National Association of Food Chains where a discussion of automated checkout took place at an association meeting in 1966. Rights to the Woodland patent had been acquired by RCA, who was attending the NAFC meeting and association member Kroger volunteered to test the concept at a store in Cincinnati. By the mid-1970’s NAFC had formed the U.S. Supermarket Ad Hoc Committee on a Uniform Grocery Product Code; the committee’s mission: establish guidelines for formation of barcoding standards. The 18 month test revealed problems with the bulls-eye configuration which was vulnerable to smearing and linear distortion, a problem which did not affect picket- fence style linear barcodes. On June 26, 1974 a 10 pack of Wrigley Juicy Fruit gum was scanned at Marsh’s Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The pre-press film master for that barcode was imaged at Fotel, Inc. in Villa park, Illinois where I worked evenings and summers during high school and college.

Barcodes 101 | 15 BARCODE VERIFIER TYPES

As barcode technology has matured and expanded into ever more, and more critical roles, barcodes are now found on a wider variety of materials and packaging configurations: metallic tubes and other cylindrical shapes, metallic-like bags, pouches and labels, parts and subassemblies of every imaginable size, shape and substrate. This means that barcode verification has also become increasingly important, and somewhat more difficult when the barcode is not always on a flat surface. What types of barcode verifiers are available to handle these challenging barcode attributes? Verifiers that use handheld gun-type scanners are an obvious choice for barcodes on cylindrical and other non-flat surfaces, but such devices are intrinsically non-compliant to ISO 15426-1, the specification that defines the test methodology and minimum accuracy requirement for devices that use the ISO 15416 specification to test linear barcodes. Handheld gun scanners are non-compliant because they are incapable of accurately testing reflectivity and contrast because the handheld scanner is not at a fixed angle and distance from the barcode. How important is this? Verifiers with gun-type scanners have been around for a long time and are still sold, and probably have a loyal following of users. However, they cannot test the barcode to the full ISO 15416 specification and therefore the test results are incomplete. Incomplete test results could be optimistic, pessimistic or equivalent to the test results from a fully- compliant verifier. Unfortunately the non-compliant verifier user never knows for sure how their results

16 | Barcodes 101 compare. Their risk profile for poorly performing barcodes is never fully known. Why bother? Admittedly, most fully ISO compliant verifiers are optimized for barcodes on flat surfaces. How can a user adapt such a device for barcodes on cylindrical surfaces? Although many of these verifiers are designed to be placed directly on top of the barcode, many can be inverted or positioned sideways so that the barcode can be easily placed in front of the scan window. The relatively new Axicon 15000 is designed to provide this sort of use-flexibility. We have seen clever V-shaped fixtures to hold curved or cylindrical substrates for flat-bottomed verifiers. The most versatile ISO compliant verifier we’ve seen for non-flat barcodes is the Webscan TruCheck 2D USB Tower. It is a non-contact verifier which uses a laser focusing system to verify 1D or 2D barcodes on a wide variety of surfaces including the sub-surfaces of assemblies such as fully populated circuit boards where the barcode cannot be directly accessed with a fixed focus verifier. What is the right barcode verifier for your application? If an off-the-shelf solution is not available, chances are a reasonable adaptation can be made, either with a fabricated fixture or a custom modification from one of the manufacturers. Barcode-Test represents a full range of verifiers from several manufactures, and we have assisted many users in finding the right device for their unique situation, and in designing and fabricating custom

Barcodes 101 | 17 fixtures for their verification process. Their risk profile for poorly performing barcodes is never fully known. Why bother?

18 | Barcodes 101 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Nachtrieb is a nationally recognized barcode expert, and was a co-founder and CEO of Fotel, Inc., the pioneer of film master manufacture and the firm that created the film master for the first commercially scanned barcode in the US. This direct experience gave him the lead in understanding both the potential of this new tool and the necessity for barcode quality.

John’s focus for nearly 40 years has been to serve the customer well by championing the Bar Code quality mandate. Click here for a list of his current and past clients.

His impeccable service begins with a comprehensive knowledge of the industry, listening carefully and asking the right questions to understand clearly the customer’s situation and concerns, and only then proposing a solution to the customer that makes sense for their business. These solutions may take one or more of the following forms:

It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon | 19 • Specific Problem Solving

• Securing and installing the right equipment for the task at hand

• Providing education to the organization through several venues This approach has made Barcode-Test a formidable competitor in an industry becoming preoccupied with price over value.

In the 21st Century bar code systems have become ubiquitous; supply chain globalization and product safety issues have made precise barcode quality mandatory. Barcodes are part of the larger Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) technology, which continues to evolve. There is a long and bright future for barcodes as their unique attributes are better understood and appropriately implemented along with other AIDC technologies. Helping users understand the technology mix is the most valuable service a barcode expert company can provide. Our goal is to assist product manufacturers, package printers and suppliers in managing barcode related risk and support reliable, predictable barcode integrity.

John was degreed at DePauw University and has a Certification in Business Administration from the University of Illinois. His other certifications and endorsements include:

20 | About The Author & Book Credits It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon | 21 • GS1 US AIDC (Automatic Identification and Data Capture) Certification, 2012

• Presenter, Barcode 101 Seminar on Barcode Quality and Compliance, 1990 to present

• Presenter on Barcode Quality in Value Cards, Interna- tional Card Manufacturing Association Trade Show, 2009

• Member, International Association of Packaging Professionals (Chicago Chapter)

• Member, Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (Chicago Chapter)

• Seminar presenter, 2012 AIDC Institute at Ohio Univer- sity. CONTACTS

John Nachtrieb, Author Barcode-Test, LLC 630-235-6077 [email protected]

Resources www.barcode-test.com www.barcodesgonewild.com

It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon | 21