Importance of Barcode Labelling for Warehouse Inventory Control

Barcodes Explained

A barcode is a standard method for identifying a particular item's manufacturer and product category. Invented in the early 1950s, barcodes have significantly impacted the global business community's flow of products and information.

Barcodes have a height and width, although there is normally no interpretive information in the height of the code. However, the height should be sufficient to allow the code to be read efficiently. Using scanners, the dark and light spaces of the barcode provide a cost-effective method for automating data collection.

Verification of Barcodes

A barcode label only becomes effective if it can be read or scanned the first time, every time. A badly printed barcode, or faded print, results in low first reading rates, imprecise information, and delays in managing stock. To ensure barcodes meet print and quality expectations, businesses use verifiers to check the bar code matches the specifications within the permitted tolerance levels and confirm the bars and spaces correctly respond to the human-readable information.

Printing options for Barcode Labelling

There are two main forms of printing barcode labels:

• Direct thermal printing – this form of printing involves heated elements of the print head coming in contact with the thermal paper, the paper responds to the heat and turns black on the sections with heat contact.
• Thermal transfer printing – we covered this topic in an earlier blog. This occurs as heat from the print head melts ink from the ribbon onto thermal paper that is thermally coated for thermal transfer use.

Benefits of Barcode Labels for Inventory Management

1. Tracking & Inventory Management – Through the use of barcode label scanning, a single barcode can provide instant access to a large volume of data which easily simplifies stock management as data is updated electronically:
   1. How products should be packed
   2. Product information, including manufacturer, weight, price, stock levels etc.

2. Enhancing Accuracy – with barcode scanning, outdated information and error corrections can be made in real-time, ensuring stock levels and inventory remain up-to-date at all times.
3. Improve Transparency – barcode scanning improves traceability of products, companies can use this information to react to maximise consumers’ experience, for example, withdraw items from stock, manage product recalls and stay on top of supply chain management.
4. Cost-Effective – Utilising barcode scanning can reduce overheads, also enabling your business to lower the costs of capital for carrying excess stock, as barcode labelling means you know exactly what is in stock and halts ordering an abundance of unnecessary items.

Let our team help you find the barcode label materials

If you are looking for barcode label materials perfectly suited to either direct or thermal transfer printing, contact our team. Wecontact our team, we have over 170 years of manufacturing label materials for a wide variety of warehouse inventory and stock management applications.