AIDC Technologies

Barcode verification grades printed symbols against ANSI print-quality standards, helping suppliers avoid costly misread penalties from major retailers.

As AIDC applications become increasingly critical to a company's success, the cost of barcode scanning failures becomes more significant. Major merchandisers such as Wal-Mart, for example, have become known for levying fines of $50,000 or more on suppliers whose product labels repeatedly fail to scan correctly. As a result, barcode verification systems, once used almost exclusively by printers and label vendors, are now commonly deployed for on-site printing as well.

Verifiers grade a symbol as unacceptable or by degrees of acceptability based on ANSI's published criteria, known as the Bar Code Print Quality Guideline. Verification devices can be integrated in-line, attached to the printer to monitor the quality of every printed label, or used in a standalone configuration to audit batches of labels. In either case, verification cannot completely eliminate barcode performance problems. It can, however, provide a quantitative measure of print contrast and derive wide-to-narrow ratios, checking printed symbol conformance against symbology print quality standards.