Logistics is experiencing moments in which the electronic commerce, globalization and economies of scale are revolutionizing all phases of the supply chain, with increasingly severe demands on productivity in warehouses, having to resort to a wide variety of storage systems. metal shelves, automated warehouses and semi-automatic picking and handling systems. But all this would not have evolved to what it is today if modern traceability had not been born four decades ago with the introduction of barcodes.
Last June, it was 40 years since a barcode was first used in a practical application. On June 26, 1974, the first product with barcodes was scanned in the United States, a pack of chewing gum. Two years later, in 1976, the 13-digit barcode was designed, which allowed barcodes to be used globally. And a year later, in 1977, the European Article Numbering (EAN) was born, which made it possible to standardize the well-known international EAN13 barcode format, which we are all used to seeing in warehouses and stores in all sectors.
The use of one-dimensional barcodes spread rapidly throughout most of the countries in the world, as they were able to follow an international standard and thus optimize maintenance and inventory control tasks from the metal shelves of the warehouse to the points of sale.
GS1, a non-profit association with a presence in more than 100 countries and with the objective of designing and implementing global standards, had been in charge of standardizing barcodes from the beginning. The GS1 launched in 2003 the first two-dimensional barcode (DataMatrix). Eight years later, in 2011, QR codes were approved as a standard, a new type of two-dimensional code that had been designed in Japan and published in 1994, and which has now become so popular thanks to smartphones.
Barcodes continue to be one of the most widely used identification and traceability systems in warehouses, thanks in large part to their low cost. Any standard printer can print readable codes, and code readers are very low cost. This is the main factor that rivals the most modern traceability systems and with many more possibilities, such as passive RFID and active RFID, but with higher costs.
ATOX Storage Systems designs and manufactures high quality metal shelving systems and storage solutions. With more than 50 years of experience, ATOX has a wide range of industrial racking, from pallet racking and picking racks, to warehouse space expansion systems such as industrial mezzaninesand elevated walkways.
With the evolution of logistics and markets, ATOX is committed to new technologies and constant innovation, designing and manufacturing automated warehouses and semi-automated systems for picking and handling tasks, which can work in cooperation with any of the existing traceability technologies. .
