Why replace bar-codes? What's the difference?
We
don`t advocate replacing bar codes. Bar-code-based systems such
as the UPC are a standard Auto-ID technology in many industries,
and will be an important legacy system for many years.
But all bar codes have a fundamental limitation: they are a line-of-sight
technology. This has a number of important consequences. First,
in most cases, they need to be scanned manually. This means
there is a labor cost associated with every read, and the
possibility of human error. It is unlikely that consumers
would bother to use bar codes in their everyday lives, scanning
bar codes as you put items into the fridge is unlikely to
become commonplace, for example. Second, bar codes need to
read individually, and therefore singulated. Multiple items
cannot be read at one time. Combined, these two factors mean
that bar codes are only read at a few control points in the
supply chain: in the case of the UPC, for example, normally
just once, at the Checkout Counter.
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