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The Humble Barcode’s Sci-Fi Future
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Business New Haven
8/7/2000
By: John Florian
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Remember the days of taking product inventories with ledger sheets and pens and lots of coffee breaks? Credit barcodes with freeing us from that torment. In fact, barcodes have become such a staple of commerce that we might take them for granted – they've been around “forever” so it's nothing new, right? Well, that's wrong, says Dave Stewart, president and founder of Asset Management Technologies, a 12-year-old Cheshire firm that's blazing trails in barcode technology. From wireless inventory control to having your Wheaties delivered to your door, barcoding's future has something for everyone.
What's your company mission? What do you do, and why?
Our main focus is to provide automated data-collection technology through the use of barcode scanning technologies, hand-held computers, label printers - products that allow our customers to collect information in an automated fashion. Our main focus is on the health-care and horticultural markets, but we also touch a myriad of other industries, often through referrals.
Barcode technology has been with us so long that people might take it for granted. But we see from your Web site (www.amtsystems.com) that much is evolving in this field.
That's for sure. We all became familiar with it through the grocery and retail stores, after the Universal Product Code was developed in the early 1970s. Then it progressed into the manufacturing world, where the first to really grab onto it was the automotive industry. Since then, bar-coding has evolved to where today, for example, radio frequency transmitting chips are being put into barcode labels.
What does that do?
Picture a basketful of products. With those new chips on the product labels, I can push that basket through a tunnel, or past scanning equipment, and the scanner will pick up everything in the basket. It won't make any difference if the barcode is facing down, because the barcode label has a transmitting device in it. This is really new, being deployed in test markets now.
Is your company involved in that?
I made a presentation recently to a major chemical company about this. They'd use it for inventory - to be able to walk around, walk by a shelf and not have to move everything. Just scan it all at once. Or, take a pallet or skid of products through a garage door opening, for instance, and scan everything that's on it.
Every manufacturing company would love that.
Well, yes. Right now it's on the expensive side, but technology always is when it's being developed. And it will take a while to get this into manufacturing systems. However, technology that saves you time also saves you money. So if you can save more time than you're spending on labor and productivity, there's a faster return on your investment.
What other new applications are you looking into?
Wireless technology. For instance, a hand-held device that's a little bigger than a TV remote control could have a barcode scanner built into it, along with a keypad and a cell phone. Here's an example of how this would work in health care: You're lying in a hospital bed and want the nurse. You push the nurse call button, which rings at the nurses' station. If the nurse is not there, a signal is sent to the nurse, and one of these data vision phones rings in her pocket. You can then talk to the nurse directly. And when the nurse goes to your bedside, she uses the same device to scan your barcoded wristband. That sends a signal into the hospital's system to activate information the nurse can access to learn whether to give you a pill or a shot.
Some other applications of this?
We're exploring wireless data collection that's tied to a company's intranet. For instance, you could be in a manufacturing plant in San Antonio and connected with one of these devices, through your intranet, to the company's Albany manufacturing plant. You can talk from one plant to the other to see if certain inventory is available to be picked up and shipped from Albany to San Antonio today. When you combine barcoding with wireless technology, you have tremendous efficiencies. You save costs and you get real-time information. BNH
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