Manage barcode labelling or risk fines

Datatrade has been supplying and maintaining industrial printers for over 30 years and is concerned by how more organisations are prepared to risk their profitability and reputation by allowing unauthorised access to the design/production of their barcode labels, or not monitoring their print quality.

“We’re seeing increasing evidence of this happening in supply chains,” Peter Laplanche, a director at Datatrade, said. “Barcode labels enable retailers, manufacturers and logistics providers to track and trace goods and while most of them recognise how broken printers can stop product flow, few have grasped the vulnerability of the actual labels through either accidental or malign abuse.”

Peter claims that 90% of companies printing ‘on demand’ labels do so from the label design programme interface, which risks operators being able to make unauthorised changes to the labels before printing. “Without a failsafe in place, a disgruntled employee could add a derogatory label to a regular client delivery,” Peter added.

A next generation label management solution (LMS), with multi-stage approval and electronic signatures of label designs, would eliminate the risk of such practices and improve both productivity and profitability.

An online data validation (ODV) from Printronix fitted to thermal printers would also analyse every barcode printed, and stop bad barcodes entering either the production or distribution chain.