The lengthy process of barcode being applied

In September 1969, members of the Administrative Systems Committee of the Food, Beverage and Consumer Goods Manufacturers Association (GMA) met with members of the National Association of Food Chain Stores (NAFC).

The meeting took place at the Motel-Cincinnati's Carousel Hotel, and the topic of the talks was the possibility of an agreement between food manufacturers and food retailers on inter-industry product codes.

The Food, Beverage and Consumer Goods Manufacturers Association wants to use an 11-digit code: which contains the various labeling schemes already in use. The Association of Food Chain Stores wanted a shorter 7-digit code that could be read at checkout using a simpler and cheaper system.

Initially, the two parties could not reach a consensus, and broke up unhappy.

Then, after years of negotiation in numerous committees, subcommittees, and ad hoc committees, the U.S. food, beverage, and consumer goods industry finally agreed on a Universal Product Code (UPC) standard.

At the checkout line at Marsh's in Troy, Ohio, in June 1974, a 31-year-old sales clerk named Sharon Buchanan scanned a 50-count pack of Wrigley's juice gum on a laser scanner. Automatic billing 67 cents. Chewing gum is sold and the bar code is born.

We tend to think of barcoding as a simple cost-reduction technology: helping supermarkets run their businesses more efficiently and thus helping to reduce costs. But like containers, barcodes are useless unless it is integrated into the system. The impact of the bar code system goes far beyond reducing costs. It helps some people solve problems, but it also creates problems for others. The interests of all parties will be greatly affected.

A barcode system is not really useful without a certain amount of usage, but getting everyone on board is not easy. Installing scanners is expensive, as is redesigning packaging with barcodes.

Retailers don't want to install scanners unless manufacturers have barcodes on all their products, and manufacturers don't want to print barcodes unless retailers have enough scanners installed.

As time went on, the bar code tipped the scales, and the benefits for some retailers became apparent. The use of barcode scanners is not cost-effective for family-run convenience stores, because the number of products and sales of such convenience stores are not large, and the use of expensive barcode scanners can not brought them enough benefits. However, for large supermarkets, the average cost of scanners can gradually decrease as sales increase. They need to shorten checkout queue time and need to track inventory, and using barcodes can  significantly improve their management efficiency, thereby reducing operating costs.

With the promotion of barcodes in the 1970s and 1980s, the scale of the retail industry is also expanding. The data entered by barcode scanners is conducive to the establishment of customer databases and membership card systems, which can track and automatically manage inventory, and merchants can achieve instant delivery, the operating cost of the store can be reduced, the scale of the supermarket can be larger, the commodities can be more abundant, and the complicated logistics operation becomes easier.

The final manifestation of the power of barcodes came in 1988, when discount department store Walmart decided to start selling food. Walmart is now the largest grocery chain in the United States and by far the largest retailer in the world. Walmart was an early adopter of barcodes and continues to invest in state-of-the-art computer intelligence for logistics and inventory management.

Joseph Woodland swiped his finger on the beach in Miami Beach to draw the prototype of the bar code, and George Lawrey transformed and perfected it with hard work, which eventually led to the widespread and successful application of this technology.

It can also be seen from the story of the barcode that no major invention can be achieved overnight, it may require the efforts of many people or even generations, and sometimes it needs the mutual promotion of many sciences and technologies to finally succeed, and this Inventors and scientists who have worked hard to change scientific research in the process deserve our respect.

With the advent of the information society of economic globalization, information networking, internationalization of life, and localization of culture, barcodes and barcode technologies originated in the 1940s, studied in the 1960s, applied in the 1970s, and popularized in the 1980s, This application system has caused great changes in the field of world circulation and is sweeping the world. As a printable computer language, the bar code is called "computer culture" by futurists. In the field of international circulation in the 1990s, the barcode was regarded as the "identity card" for commodities to enter the international computer market, which made the whole world look at it with admiration. The barcodes printed on the outer packaging of commodities are like economic information links that organically connect manufacturers, exporters, wholesalers, retailers and customers around the world. Once these ties are connected with the EDI system, they will form a multiple and multi-dimensional information network. The relevant information of various commodities is like being invested in an invisible and non-stop automatic guiding transmission mechanism, flowing to all parts of the world and being active in the world. The field of world commodity circulation.

Barcode History

The Development of Modern Barcode Technology

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