Barcode technology has become omnipresent and is being used in every aspect of businesses to prevent errors caused by human intervention, and enhance overall efficiency across applications. Processes like inventory control have seen revolutionary changes since barcode help to track all product details and update inventory levels at all times. Barcodes are a universal feature now and do not attract attention anymore. They are in use in offices and commercial establishments, hospitals and warehouses, hotels, government agencies and all organizations required to keep an inventory of products and services.
Customers and clients seldom stop to consider the working of barcode scanner technology. No one thinks of the meaning of the parallel black and white lines, the light beam flitting across them and how they transmit the same data found on the label. The only certainty in everyone”s mind is the accuracy of the information and the fast pace of transactions.
The rationale behind all this is manner in which barcode technology works. Any item that is barcoded has been identified, and all relevant details about it stored in the system or the host computer. The information coding takes place in a special barcoding language, and it is the job of the barcode scanner to decode that information and present it in a human readable form.
Barcode languages are simple since they contain symbols that are like a string of bars of different sizes, some short, some long, and interspaced with unequal spaces shown in white. Thus it appears as a series and every part of the series stands for a certain number of characters. Special barcode software eases the whole process of storing information and later decoding it.
Hence barcode software is the critical part of barcodes and barcode scanning processes that eases the working of the whole system. Specialist software programmers use barcode software to keep an inventory list of their products. This is accomplished by entering the name of the product, and assigning a unique product identification by generating a barcode for it with the aid of an advanced database system that stores all the product information. This information is the key to all inventory tracking, updating records, and each time the barcode scanner scans the barcode, its details are immediately extracted from this database.
Barcode scanners are designed to read the barcode label with the aid of photo sensors that are fitted inside. The sensors are responsible for deciphering each scanned barcode with its spaces, parallel bars of different length and widths. Then this is matched to the corresponding information in the database.