subject: What Business Will Be Like Without Barcodes [print this page] What Business Will Be Like Without Barcodes
Today, you can always see barcodes wherever you are. Most of the time, you will see them on the stuffs that you purchase from stores or from a shop. Although you know that they exist everywhere, do you know how their humble beginnings?
Barcodes were created in 1948. The story behind is that there was a graduate student overhearing the conversation between a president of a company and the school dean. The president of a particular food chain begging on a dean of a school to undertake a research on how to capture product information automatically at the check out counter. The dean turned down the project but the student took the information to a friend who worked on ideas and came up with using patterns of ink that glows under the ultraviolet light. The idea, although carefully planned, has downsides and did not end up meeting the needs of most retailers. The graduate did not stop and continued building a system that could capture product information. He encountered several problems like high printing prices, use of large bulky equipments to name a few. Back then, to create bar code reader, strong light bulbs were used but eventually burned the paper due to heat.
In fact, the earliest bar code systems were very expensive thus not all stores can afford them. However, as time went by, the evolution of this system was aggressively done thus they have found a way to print barcodes onto the product itself. The barcodes became affordable and were now used by a lot of retail stores and establishments. In fact, barcodes have changed the way people do their business today.
It is convenient for a store to have a system that can easily keep track of the purchase as well as the inventory so that they will come up with better decisions like how much inventory should be ordered. They can also track the different items that consumers are buying and which items are not selling. Simply put, barcodes ensures fast business transactions. Doing manual inventory is but a thing of the past.
Computers can also help with the barcode system. They are integrated to make the transaction fast. For instance, cashiers just simply use the bar code to scan the product in thus eliminating the need to punch in the price.
The process happens very quickly and that the cashier can easily check your items in no time at all. In this way, a lot of customers will be served by most businesses. The pricing information can also be kept track easily thus eliminating the need for long bookkeeping which usually takes manual checking by most merchants. In fact, most merchants now have a lot of time in their hands to do other tasks like overseeing other business processes. The thing here is that the barcode system has improved the whole of businesses and it is rightful to say that this invention was the most relevant one that ever happened in the business industry.
