The impact of Barcode Scanner Technology and its

functions

Introduction:

Our world has turned out to be an ever growing one and industrial revolution and

the rise of technology have certainly made an impact in contributing towards the

above mentioned fact.

Technology has invaded every sphere of our lives and made us heavily depend

upon it. Same holds true for barcode scanner technology. The scanner technology

has revolutionized the process of inventory control. And now they are everywhere

around us keeping track of product information and inventory levels.

Nowadays, they are also used for adding products into gift registries.

Compromisingly and inevitably no one gives a second thought about the usage of

barcode scanner technology.

Barcode Scanners and Barcode Readers:

Most people take barcode scanners and barcode readers for granted. It is pretty

rare for anyone to think about how a simple sliding of a product across the scanner

counter reacts with the name tag and the price of the product appearing on the

monitor by just scanning through some weird label and a code that comes along

with every product we purchase.

Barcode Scanner Principles:

In order to understand how the above mentioned operation works, one definitely

needs to understand how barcodes are generated and how they work to identify the

product itself.

Barcode is nothing but information in coded form. This coded form is what we call

as the barcode and every barcode is unique and it contains details about the

particular product. This information is compressed, coded and printed at the back

of the product using a special coding language.

The scanner on the other hand reads through the bar codes and translates it to the

system giving details about the product and its price which normal humans cannot

understand or decipher.

This barcode language is also quite easy to understand actually. It is a combination

of specific symbols which equals a series of bar lines. These bar lines come in

short, long along with varying spaces between them.

Every part of the collection of bar lines denotes number of characters depending

upon the date the code was actually entered into the barcode software.

Barcode software:

Barcode software is in fact the basic initial point or primary stage of every barcode

generation as well as barcode scanners systems. Without this software, the

procedure that was mentioned above is absolutely impossible to be performed.

Programmers use this software to enter details about a particular product and the

system generates a barcode value or details for that particular product.

A sophisticated database is maintained to store details regarding every product as

well as important files for the barcode software to function smoothly.

This helps to keep track of products available in stock and out of stock, expiry

details and other important facts about the products.

It also enables smooth functioning and speeds up the updating process of the prices

of these products.

Conclusion:

Whenever the scanner reads a particular barcode, it tries to match it with the barcodes

available within the database and finds out required information about the particular

product. This point of sales system has made it practically possible to simultaneously take

care of several customers in various supermarkets. In general it has made life quicker and

comfortable.