[TriLUG] central bar-code database?
Brian Henning
brian at strutmasters.com
Mon Feb 13 14:12:17 EST 2006
On the other hand, the "bar code" most commonly found on retail products
is a UPC - Universal Product Code. These are administered by the GS1
US (formerly the Uniform Code Council), and theoretically should be able
to be traced back to their registered owner.
~Brian
William Sutton wrote:
> Having worked in a manufacturing firm (one of the largest in the world)
> as one of the people responsible for the manufacturing software, I'll wade
> in on this and give you the short and long answers.
>
> The short answer (unsurprisingly) is no.
>
> The long answer is somewhat more complicated.
>
> First thing to remember about a barcode: it isn't magic. It takes
> different patterns of rectangles to represent a single data character
> (e.g., 0-9A-Za-z). Add to that the usual use of a start/stop bit to flag
> the scanner that a data pattern has started/ended, and you're looking at a
> small amount of data in that barcode.
>
> This isn't really a concern since most of the time, the data represented
> by the barcode is printed at the bottom (e.g., 001-4323-4439-A), and is
> usually some sort of serial number.
>
> Different serial numbers are constructed differently based on a number of
> factors:
> - How the business that contracted the product wants it composed
> - How the manufacturer wants it composed
> - Uniqueness concerns
> - Lot/sublot/manufacture date desires
>
> Generally you'll see one of a number of strategies employed:
> - a block representing the lot/sublot
> - a block representing the date
> - a block representing the revision
> - a block representing a unique sequence
>
> Any of these can be fixed or variable width, and in just about any order
> desired.
>
> And that's for one manufacturer for one customer for one product. You
> can appreciate the potential complexity involved, particularly considering
> the fact that no one manufacturer is going to share this information with
> its competitors.
>
> Now, some of these numbers are standardized for one vendor across its
> products (think Lenovo ThinkPads) so that any repair work can follow a
> standardized serial number format and product repair process (think RMA).
> Nonetheless, that may necessitate a manufacturer code being added to the
> serial number so that one can know who worked on it...
>
> As a final aside...lots of information is tracked by the serial number.
> Depending on what is kept by whom, you can have as little information as
> the manufacturer or as much as every step of the manufacturing process
> including test results.
>
> HTH :)
>
--
----------------
Brian A. Henning
strutmasters.com
336.597.2397x238
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