A Valid Argument

According to the United Nations one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted – a figure estimated to be worth a staggering €354bn.

Of course, much of this is due to consumers purchasing too much food and then throwing it away and supermarkets overstocking. However, food is just one of the items that is also being wasted as a result of poor quality barcoding within the supply chain.

Correctly documenting product information on labels and packaging is critical. Traceability is now enforced not only at the customer level, but also through legal directives that must be adhered to. Put simply, costs are regularly incurred by the simple absence, inaccuracy, or illegibility of product data through badly produced barcodes that cannot be scanned.

In 2014, The GS1 Label Quality Report, based on a field study conducted in 14 countries, discovered that almost 30 per cent of all pallets reviewed had some form of labelling problem such as poor print quality, wrong serial shipping container codes, application of multiple labels or incorrect product information. Unreadable barcodes will usually require re-labelling, re-scanning, or even manual entry of critical information by a human operator.

Why is the barcode so important? Barcodes represent data and the different widths of bars and spaces in a symbol represent different numbers or letters that can be decoded by a scanner. Pallets and other transport units must be labelled with a GS1 logistics label that is used to identify the units transported in the supply chain, which relies on the ability to scan barcodes. Accurate printing is therefore fundamental for effective value chain management, as the rapid and accurate scanning of GS1 data provides the basis for all the electronic business transactions that follow.

With barcoded product often making its way through multiple scanning points throughout the supply chain, if the wrong barcode is put on a product it will not be identified correctly. Alternatively, if the wrong barcode is put on the shipping label it could end up being sent to an incorrect destination. Even if it does arrive at its intended destination, when a pallet is rejected at the customer’s premises because of missing or inaccurate product data, a manufacturer could lose much more than the potential earnings from the sale.

There may also be costs for sending back and re-palletising and, in the case of food, the entire shipment could have to be thrown away. Also, with the adoption of globally regulated standards like GS1 and ISO, the market has seen a new trend where customers can impose fines to their suppliers to ensure manufacturer compliance and account for the resources to handle improperly barcoded deliveries. Some even charge back a portion of the manufacturer’s invoice for taking receipt of the non-compliant product.

There are many potential causes of poor quality barcodes – unsuitable paper, a worn rubber roller, missing pixels from print head damage, or even a ribbon wrinkle could produce diagonal voids. Another major issue is the lack of knowledge regarding the GS1 standards and, for example, the importance of white space around a barcode. Add wear and tear, and the quality will only get worse once the product leaves a premises.

GS1 standards recommend the use of validation and verification equipment to check that barcodes are readable straight after they are printed. Although barcode validation and verification are two important factors in ensuring best practice, they are two different things and should not be confused.

Barcode validation refers to the process of ensuring the correct barcode is applied to the correct product and ensures that the barcode can be read and the data is as it should be. Similarly, barcode verification measures and grades the quality of a printed barcode to the required ISO standards. Often retailers will have a label specification document that details printer resolution, label size and layout of printed information on it, as well as the desired ISO/ANSI grades that barcodes should meet.

Verification equipment meeting the requirements of ISO 15416 and ISO 15415 will provide a check on all the important criteria. Personnel also need to be trained in the use of validation and verification equipment, and must always check symbols visually before using a device to provide detailed information. Each symbol must be checked to see that the bars are the correct height, and that no horizontal lines or spaces cut through the symbol. Any marks crossing the bars and spaces of a symbol will reduce its effective height and make it very difficult to scan.

The production of poor quality barcodes is a problem that can be easily addressed with an investment in validation and verification devices, in conjunction with the use of state-of-the-art printing technology from a trusted solutions provider. Ensuring consistent readability and providing 100 per cent accurate automated data capture, it is possible for every shipment to be processed with a high quality barcode, thereby lowering production costs, enhancing overall productivity and reducing costly errors.