Originally Published PMPN April 2002
SUPPLEMENT
Back to the Future of Bar CodesThe authors of last year's look at bar codes, "The Future of Bar Codes" in the March 2001 issue of PMP News, return to offer a little history and further perspective.
by Ralph Dillon, director, quality engineering, Pharmacia; Edward Arling, senior director, quality assurance, Pharmacia; and Lucas Lindsey, student, Marquette University
To
understand the bar code, its capabilities, and its future, medical device and
pharmaceutical manufacturers must first understand its history.
BACK
October 2002 will mark the 50th anniversary of the bar code. In October of 1952, Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver were granted the very first patent for bar codes. United States Patent No. 2,612,994 was issued to Woodland and Silver on October 7, 1952, for their "Classifying Apparatus and Method."
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Instead, visible black ink code was more appealing, especially to the electronics and railroad industries. Although industry articles heralded bar codes along with nuclear-powered cars and three-dimensional television, initially no significant adoption happened. Railroads put their own pilot systems in place for automatically tracking railcars. The U.S. electronics industry, busy making a calculating device called a computer, was intrigued by bar codes because they seemed more practical than punch cards. Consequently, the computer industry, with its continued piloting and increasingly smart hardware and software, nurtured bar code possibilities during this critical infancy.
Bar codes were considered for check processing, but there was no reliable, cost-effective bar code reading device available in the 1950s. So a consensus group of banks and technology companies standardized on the then more-reliable MICR Standard for magnetic ink numbering. However, banking's use of digitally read, registered, and routed numbers developed practices and technology that would later be applied to bar codes for controlling inventory and supply chains.
Finally, after almost twenty years of false starts and pilot programs, the universal product code (UPC) standard was invented by George Laurer at IBM. In 1973, the UPC was adopted as a standard by the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council (UGPCC), a corporation formed by the grocery industry's leading trade associations. The UGPCC evolved to become the Uniform Code Council Inc. (UCC).
The first world-changing use of bar codes was on June 26, 1974. At Marsh supermarket in Troy, OH, a single pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum was the first retail product sold with the help of a bar code and a scanner. Today this Juicy Fruit pack is on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
The advance of technology in integrated circuits and inexpensive lasers has made possible the rapid growth of bar code use from less than 1% of grocery stores in 1978 to more than 70% of the U.S. grocery stores today.
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| Markem's SmartDate 3+ prints a number of two-dimensional codes, including Reduced Space Symbology and DataMatrix. |
Once these linear marks became ubiquitous, bar codes went two dimensional to give product manufacturers more coding options in less space. In 1990, a patent was issued for the DataMatrix code. In 1996, the Japanese Medical Manufacturers Association adopted the DataMatrix code, representing the first industry-sanctioned standard in two-dimensional bar codes. In late 1997, leading pharmaceutical companies began internal unpublished use of two-dimensional UV DataMatrix codes.
The UCC developed its own solution to space constraints, Reduced Space Symbology (RSS). After years of development work and pilot programs, the council announced use of its RSS-14 code at a Dayton, OH, supermarket in May 2001.
TO . . . DAY
Bar code use has exploded! Most retail products, retail coupons for products, product rebates, vehicle tracking, shipped parcels, mail, rented products, library books, and commercial component inventory systems use bar codes for monitoring and control. Where there is not yet a bar code, cost pressures are forcing companies to consider them to increase efficiency.
Pharmaceutical and medical device companies are using bar codes not only for final product but also for components, subassembly, and clinical supplies that support research. The industry leaders are even using bar codes for tracking critical documentation, such as standard operating procedures and expense reports.
Today there are two coding approaches used by industry. For UPC and consistent information, conventional printers supply the bar codes on packaging. Variable information such as serialization and lot codes is increasingly being bar coded with in-line printing. In-line bar coding technologies vary in cost-effectiveness, depending upon production volume, code placement, and product presentation. Popular bar code marking technologies for pharmaceutical and medical devices include impact printers, thermal transfer printers, ink-jet printers, and laser printers. A company's choice also depends upon resolution and line speed, which have to be balanced carefully in order to print a code that is readable. (For more on striking this balance, see the sidebar) Depending on speed and budget, these in-line-printed codes can be verified in-line by either scanners or machine vision systems.
There are, however, new developments today that will influence packaging's future. They include:
Speed. Faster, more-precise equipment, such as direct impact, ink-jet, and laser printer models, continues to be offered by the package equipment industry. Integrators can provide high-speed realizable equipment that seamlessly handles advanced bar code needs for very-high-speed lines.
Lighting. Reliable UV LEDs are commercially available from companies like Coherent (Santa Clara, CA), making the replacement of awkward light bulbs and tubes possible. Pricing will come down as volume increases.
Nanomarking. Molecule- and protein-based bar code patents have been granted. Such work could evolve into nanomarking techniques for very small things that parrot bar code use in packaging. Applications for this technology will most certainly evolve.
Affordability. Prices for printing systems, as with computer equipment, keep falling and features keep rising. Increasing electronic capabilities are available at decreasing prices. The difference in equipment today versus five years ago shows that technology is developing faster in this category than in other general-use equipment categories. Expect the pace to accelerate.
Demand. Healthcare provider organizations are expanding requirements to include bar codes on every unit dose. Legislation requiring bar codes is under consideration around the world. If one recognizes the repetition of past technology growth, this seems analogous to the late 1970s when grocery providers started to demand bar codes on all products.
THE FUTURE
After looking at past and present, what do we predict for the future?
More use of current technology. Bar codes will be used for more transactions. Bar code creation is now included as a font on the latest Microsoft products, and bar code recognition software is increasingly being included with scanners.
Increased information. Today's two-dimensional codes provide many more digits' information than UPCs. Coupled with the power of Internet and database access, two-dimensional codes allow the possibility of tying all relevant product data to a bar code.
New formats for denser information. As in the past, clever innovators will imagine and then develop bar codes with many more digits than even today. With initial bar codes featuring digits numbering in the 10s and today's new two-dimensional codes in the 100s, tomorrow's bar codes will have digits in the 1000s and beyond.
Ease of use. Bar codes will be easier to use as more user friendly software is devised. The "plug-and-play" tools of computer hardware inspire "scan-and-know" ones for bar code–tied information.
Innovations. New uses will include counterfeit protection and supply chain tracking from product birth through use and discard.
Normally nonvisible light and other nonapparent color-coding will increasingly be used because these codes can be placed directly over product marketing facings without attracting consumer attention. Expect three areas of new applications: nonvisible light spectrum, polarized or color filtered light, and an explosion of color in codes.
Three-dimensional bar codes will join two-dimensional bar codes and the one-dimensional
codes we find on retail shelves. One such technology involves the use of taggants.
These small, typically plastic particles are embedded into product or its packaging
components. Through the use of a combination of colors, taggants have been critical
to tracing explosives and their components since the 1970s. (See the sidebar.)
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Bell-Mark Sales Co. Cognex Dynic USA Fumex Inc. |
Adolph Gottscho Inc. Griffin-Rutgers Company, Inc. Label Vision Systems Markem |
Quint Co. Technology Concepts Inc. Videojet Technologies Inc. |
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