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  การสร้างโค้ดหรืออัตลักษณ์เลขหมาย ที่เครื่องจักรสามารถเข้าใจได้ เป็นสิ่งจำเป็นสำหรับชิ้นส่วนประกอบในสายการผลิตสมัยใหม่ รวมทั้งกระบวนการตรวจติดตามสินทรัพย์ และ การควบุมสินค้าคงคลัง
อย่างไรก็ตาม ผู้ประกอบการส่วนใหญ่ไม่มีระบบตรวจสอบคุณภาพการสร้างโค้ดหรืออัตลักษณ์เลขหมายบนชิ้นงาน ซึ่งอาจส่งผลกระทบต่อกระบวนการผลิตและระบบติดตามในภายหลังได้ ซึ่งแท้จริงแล้ว การมีระบบสร้างอัตลักษณ์เลขหมายและระบบตรวจสอบที่มีประสิทธิภาพนั้น เป็นเรื่องไม่ซับซ้อน
กล่าวคือ เพียงแค่สังเกตว่ากระบวนการใดมีข้อบกพร่อง จากนั้นจึงปรับปรุงกระบวนการดังกล่าวให้ดีขึ้น   
การนำชิ้นส่วนประกอบไปตรวจสอบโค้ดหรืออัตลักษณ์เลขหมายในแผนกควบคุมคุณภาพนั้นกินเวลาและมีค่าใช้จ่ายสูง อย่างเช่น การสุ่มตัวอย่าง ซึ่งเป็นไปได้ว่าอาจมีชิ้นส่วนประกอบบางชิ้นหลุดรอด และหากพบว่ามีความผิดพลาดเกิดขึ้น บริษัทจำเป็นจะต้องตรวจสอบการสร้างโค้ดหรืออัตลักษณ์เลขหมายของสายการผลิตในช่วงเวลานั้นทั้งหมด  
​การสร้างโค้ดหรืออัตลักษณ์เลขหมายที่ผิดพลาดบนผลิตภัณฑ์นั้นนำไปสู่ปัญหา 2 ประการ คือ
1.     ลูกค้าปฏิเสธผลิตภัณฑ์ที่มีโค้ดหรืออัตลักษณ์เลขหมายที่ผิดพลาดเหล่านั้น และจะส่งผลให้เกิดการสูญเสียอย่างมากหากผลิตภัณฑ์นั้นได้ถูกส่งมอบไปแล้ว
2.     การสร้างโค้ดหรืออัตลักษณ์เลขหมายที่ถูกต้องลงแทนที่อาจไม่ชัดเจนหรือไม่สามารถอ่านได้ ซึ่งจะส่งผลต่อการเรียกดูข้อมูลในการขอรับบริการ รวมถึงทำให้การตรวจติดตามในขั้นตอนการผลิตเป็นเรื่องยากลำบากมากขึ้น  ​

    "เราจะนำประโยชน์ของการผลิตและการตรวจติดตามแบบดิจิตอลมาเพิ่มประสิทธิภาพได้อย่างไร"
     จาก www.pryormarking.com/digital-manufacturing-and-traceability​
    การปฏิวัติระบบดิจิตอลเกิดอยู่รอบ ๆ ตัวเรา ที่เห็นอย่างเด่นชัดคือภาคการผลิตที่มีส่วนช่วยสร้างนวัตกรรมใหม่ๆ
    สาเหตุที่ได้รับความนิยมนั้นคือ ข้อมูล!! เพราะการบริหารและวิเคาระห์ข้อมูลที่มีประสิทธิภาพช่วยให้ทำงานได้ดียิ่งขึ้นและมีประสิทธิภาพมากขึ้น และส่งผลให้สินค้ามีคุณภาพสูงขึ้นด้วย โดยมีการคาดการณ์ว่าการผลิตแบบดิจิตอลจะเพิ่มขึ้น 7.6% ระหว่างปี 2016-2020
     เหตุที่ "ข้อมูล" มีส่วนช่วยผู้ผลิตนั้น กล่าวคือ การช่วยติดตามส่วนประกอบในการผลิต ตั้งแต่วัตถุดิบไปจนสิ้นสุดกระบวนการ ด้วยการติดตามที่แม่นยำ  ทำให้สามารถระบุและสืบค้นข้อมูลแหล่งกำเนิดและประวัติบันทึกในแต่ละกระบวนการได้ในแบบ ณ เวลาปัจจุบัน ซึ่งช่วยลดค่าใช้จ่าย ลดของเสียและลดเวลา ที่เกิดจากการเรียกคืนสินค้า และด้วยการวิเคาระห์ข้อมูลทำให้สามารถรู้ได้ว่ากระบวนการใดเกิดข้อบกพร่องและควรได้รับการปรับปรุงแก้ไขในทันที
     การตรวจติดตามการผลิตแบบดิจิตอลต้องการเครื่องมือที่จำเป็น 3 อย่าง  คือ เครื่อง Mark ระบ Vision และโปรแกรมบริหารจัดการข้อมูล โดยการทำ Laser หรือ Dot mark  เลข ID บนทุกชิ้นส่วนที่ต้นกระบวนการ หลังจากนั้นจะทำการบันทึกเลข ID ทั้งก่อนเข้าและหลังผ่านกระบวนการต่างๆ เพื่อสร้างข้อมูลจำเพาะ ทั้งข้อมูลเครื่องจักร สิ่งแวดล้อม วันและเวลา เป็นต้น
     โปรแกรมบริหารจัดการข้อมูล จะประสานการทำงานของเครื่อง Mark และระบ Vision เพื่อรับข้อมูลมาบันทึก บริหารจัดการ และจัดทำรายงาน เพื่อเผยแพร่ให้ผู้เกี่ยวข้องในองค์กรได้รับทราบ ทำให้สามารถตรวจติดตามชิ้นส่วนที่ต้องการได้ไม่ว่าจะอยู่ส่วนใดในโลก
     ดังที่กล่าวมาทั้งหมด การผลิตและการตรวจติดตามแบบดิจิตอลสามารถเพิ่มประสิทธิภาพการทำงานและช่วยเพิ่มผลิตผลให้แก่องค์กรได้ ยิ่งประยุกต์ใช้เร็วเท่าไรก็จะก่อเกิดประโยชน์แก่องค์กรเร็วขึ้นเท่านั้

By Paul Trujillo
Paul Trujillo is a Product Marketing Manager at Informatics specializing in Inventory Warehouse Management and Supply Chain product lines. His nearly 15 years of experience has put him at the forefront of industry technology and developing trends.

Every time we purchase something we interact with a barcode, but rarely do we give them much notice. Yet barcodes play a crucial role in the effective and efficient operation of our economy, from small businesses to large multinational conglomerates.

What is a barcode?
​A barcode is “A machine-readable code in the form of numbers and a pattern of parallel lines of varying widths, printed on and identifying a product.” But in truth a barcode is so much more. Barcode systems help businesses and organizations track products, prices, and stock levels for centralized management in a computer software system allowing for incredible increases in productivity and efficiency.

The lines and patterns on a barcode are actually representations of numbers and data and their development allowed basic information about a product to be easily read by an optical scanning device, a barcode scanner, and automatically entered into a computer system. This vastly reduced the time it took to record such information and eliminated the potential for human data entry error.

​Barcodes started out with simple 1-dimensional designs, consisting of basic black lines that could only be read by specially designed barcode scanners. However, today barcodes come in many shapes and sizes and a wide range of designs and many can even be read by mobile phones and other devices.

Brief history of the barcode

The barcode has a long and interesting history from its initial development nearly 70 years ago through today. It is an ever changing story, as the technology behind the barcode is constantly evolving, and we discover ways to put more and more information into these “machine-readable” codes. It all started in 1949 on a beach when Joseph Woodland, a mechanical engineer at Drexel University, drew a set of parallel lines in the sand that “represented a kind of ‘long form’ of dots and dashes” or Morse code. Woodland had been thinking about the ways Morse code might be used to solve a problem his colleague Bernard Silver had presented to him. Months earlier, Silver had overheard the president of a grocery chain appeal to the dean of Drexel University to help him devise a system to automate the grocery checkout process.
​
On October 20, 1949, Woodland and Silver filed a patent application for a “Classifying Apparatus and Method” — the first barcode concept. They finally received their patent in October 1952, and while the idea was intriguing to a number of companies and industries, the scanning technology, which would eventually allow the barcode to become one of the most ubiquitous symbols in the world did not yet exist.

In the 1950s and 1960s various companies and industries tried to develop the barcode technology. The first implementation was the KarTrak system developed by David Collins for the Boston and Maine Railroad company. It was subsequently selected as the standard by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) and by 1974, 95% of the AAR fleet was labeled with the KarTrak system. However, the system was never fully functional and its use was discontinued by the late 1970s.

The breakthrough that would lead to the global spread of barcodes was the development of the Universal Product Code (UPC). In 1966 the National Association of Food Chains (NAFC) began to discuss the idea of automated checkout systems. At the time, RCA owned the rights to Woodland and Silver’s original patent and began an internal project to develop an effective system.
Then, in the mid-1970s, the NAFC established the U.S. Supermarket Ad Hoc Committee on a Uniform Grocery Product Code, to create basic guidelines for barcode development and an effective coding system. This led to the creation of a standardized 11-digit code to identify any product.

​At the time, IBM employed George Lauer and had him begin work on what would become the standard UPC linear 1D barcode. The critical moment came in 1974 on June 26th when the first barcode was scanned in a supermarket in Troy, Ohio. It was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum.

Over time the barcode has expanded from simple lines to complicated designs and helps people track everything from a can of soda to top secret assets in the Department of Defense.

1D vs 2D Barcodes
There are two types of barcodes: linear – or 1D, and 2D. The most visually recognizable, the UPC (Universal Product Code) is a linear 1D barcode made up of two parts: the barcode and the 12-digit UPC number. The first six numbers of the barcode is the manufacturer’s identification number. The next five digits represent the item’s number. The last number is called a check digit which enables the scanner to determine if the barcode was scanned correctly.

1D Barcode 

​Uniform Product Code (UPC)
Retail stores for sales checkout; inventory, etc.

POSTNET
Encoding zip codes on U.S. mail

​Bookland
Based on ISBN numbers and used on book covers

Code 128
Used in preference to Code 39 because it is more compact

Interleaved 2 of 5
Used in the shipping and warehouse industries

Codabar
Used by Federal Express, in libraries, and blood banks

2D Barcode

Maxicode
MaxiCode symbols can encode two messages; a primary and a secondary message. Used by the United Parcel Service.

A linear barcode typically holds any type of text information.  In contrast, a 2D barcode is more complex and can include more information in the code: price, quantity, web address or image. A linear barcode scanner cannot read a 2D barcode, requiring the use of an image scanner for reading the information embedded in a 2D barcode. Mobile phones with cameras, like iPhones and Android phones, and many other devices can read 2D barcodes through their integrated cameras.
The development of the 2D barcode greatly expanded the application of barcodes. Now that they could contain more information and are easily readable by consumers (via their mobile phones) the 2D barcode could do much more than just keep track of assets and inventory.
Today, 2D codes, especially QR codes, which can hold as much as 7,000 digits or 4,000 characters of text, are used by companies to share information or websites and videos with consumers, or by healthcare facilities to monitor medication, and even to integrate data with programs like MS Office, MS SQL Servers, and other databases and files.  Try this free QR code generator to create a QR code for your business.

How do barcodes work?

Barcodes work through the combination of a symbology (the barcode) and a scanner that can read the symbols and convert them into useful information, often information about an item’s origin, price, type, and location. The scanner reads the barcode and automatically enters the information stored in it into a system – often some type of database.

This tool has provided many, many benefits for businesses. It paved the way for the globally connected distribution channels we now have and it is what allows big corporations like Walmart to ensure they have products properly stocked and priced around the world. It has also become a crucial tool to help small and medium businesses, as well as hospitals and government groups, keep track of assets and improve their efficiencies.

Some of the ways businesses use barcodes include:

1. Keeping track of inventory. A basic inventory tracking system consists of software and a barcode scanner or mobile computer. Inventory items (like products you sell, supplies, or raw materials) will all have barcode labels, so when you remove an item from stock, you just scan the barcode to reduce the available count in your inventory tracking software, instead of having to type in a SKU.
2. Keeping track of assets. Any business, no matter how large or small, has IT assets and fixed assets. Barcoded asset tags are attached to each individual asset, and can be scanned to check items in or out in your asset tracking software. It’s a great way to improve accountability and makes audits much easier.
3. Use barcodes in return mail. Add a barcode to the return-mail registration postcard that matches the product’s serial number, and then you can instantly track which serial numbers are registered, and which aren’t. Plus, your customers won’t have to locate and transcribe a lengthy serial number.
4. Include barcodes in a mail merge. If your company is hosting an event, you can add barcodes to an RSVP card so you can track who has responded – without trying to translate anyone’s handwriting.
5. Add barcodes to invoices. Add a barcode that represents the customer number or the individual invoice number so when it’s returned with payment, you can easily locate the customer account or invoice number. This will prevent problems like applying payments to the incorrect customer account or invoice.​

How you create a barcode

How Do Barcodes Help Businesses?

How can barcodes help your business’s bottom line? Strictly speaking it isn’t the existence of barcodes themselves that help businesses save and make more money; it’s the systems behind them.

Take the Arizona Cardinals scoreboard crew for example, they recently implemented an asset tracking system (leveraging barcode technology) in order to track all of the parts involved in a flawless game day experience. As a result, they were able to save over 500 hours per year. How’s that for improving efficiency!

Just because you’re not an NFL team doesn’t mean that barcodes can’t help to improve how your small business works. In fact, whether you make and sell physical products or you just can never seem to figure out where your projector is when you need to give a presentation, labelling and tracking your assets with barcodes can save your business time and money.

QR Code Generator: 5 Ways to Use QR Codes

Have a question about barcodes or ready to optimize your inventory?
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Article originally posted in Engineering Subcontractor May 2017 Page 62 - 63.

The evolution of Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things has seen an increasing number of manufacturing sectors embracing component traceability and expect the same of subcontractors. Alastair Morris, sales director at Pryor, looks at how developments in technology are simplifying the adoption of this smart way of working so firms at every stage of the supply chain can enjoy the benefits Industry 4.0, big data and the Internet of Things, these are all very much the buzzwords of today in the world of manufacturing, and for good reason as they are having a transformative positive impact on businesses throughout the sector. Similar to the way in which having a smartphone can enable people to be more efficient and organised by having a wealth of information at their fingertips, these concepts along with cutting edge digital technologies mean that data can be captured, managed and shared globally to boost productivity and, ultimately, profitability.

Perhaps the biggest changes that are occurring, thanks to the growth of digital and networking advances, are in traceability capabilities. Once enjoyed exclusively by a small number of sectors, such as medical and military, the ability to track and trace individual components within an assembly throughout the entire manufacturing process is now more accessible than ever to markets across industry, especially in aerospace and automotive, as the practice becomes simpler and more cost effective to implement.

​Furthermore, contractors at every level of the supply chain are increasingly being expected to adopt comparable traceability that will allow manufacturers to be able to drill down into the data that can be made available to find the exact history of each part and material. Firms that are not prepared to look beyond the immediate short term tasks of engineering and delivering components risk being left behind and overtaken by competitors who are taking a proactive approach and evolving in line with the technological developments.

Why is traceability important?
Manufacturers don’t want a fragmented supply chain and it is critical for contractors to acknowledge that all components form part of a bigger puzzle that is not complete without every one of its individual elements. Being able to identify the origin of each part in real time is key. Indeed, manufacturing is increasingly becoming a data-driven sector and clients want full traceability of components and process information to be able to better control, analyse and improve the entire life cycle of products.

Traceability also cuts the risks, cost, waste and time associated with recalls when something goes wrong. By tracking individual parts and storing various parameters and big data, firms throughout the supply chain can instantly access information to identify exactly how, when and where the problem occurred. The issue can then be investigated and fixed rapidly and efficiently to prevent damage to credibility and reputation.

​This level of intelligence and the ability to share it globally can also be the difference between having to recall an entire month’s production and just the changing of the individual faulty parts. For example, traceability means it is possible to know exactly which individual component is affected, precisely where it is mounted in an assembly and in which aeroplane engine so that it can be replaced quickly and easily.

Equally, traceability and the effective management of big data can also help to identify and monitor trends and bottlenecks in methods. The information gathered can be audited and used to implement efficiency and manufacturing process improvements for greater productivity, business performance and profitability. This proactive way of working helps to identify issues before they become major problems that are far more challenging to tackle.

How traceability works
Coding and data capture are at the heart of effective traceability. The process begins as early as possible with a specially designed marking device giving raw materials a unique identification tag, which can be a barcode, typically 2D or Data Matrix, or readable serial number, that they will keep throughout its service life.

Once the part enters the machining and manufacturing stages the ID is recorded by vision equipment. Data is then added before and after each process to ensure no steps are missed and that they are completed in the right order to build up a history for the part. When the parts reach assembly they are all scanned and crosschecked to the bill of materials to ensure nothing is missed and that the correct assembly process is followed. Full traceability is now possible as every part in the assembly has a unique ID and quality risks can be instantly located.

Implementing traceability and effective data management
Although sophisticated solutions that enable traceability have historically been viewed as high price items, it is important to note that they are now extremely cost effective to implement. Furthermore, the resulting expense and time savings that come with ensuring traceability of individual parts throughout the entire manufacturing process and beyond far outweigh the initial outlay.

The most straightforward way to introduce data-driven practices and traceability is by partnering with an established permanent marking, identification and traceability systems specialist that offers a holistic solution. Pryor, for instance, provides a complete package that incorporates everything needed to ensure full traceability, including equipment that applies the ID to parts, readers and data management software.

The technology has been developed to fully integrate easily into existing processes, machines and systems within an operation, including everything from SAP and manufacturing execution systems software to Excel spread sheet-based setups. Equally, the system allows data to be accessed and shared securely throughout a facility, as well as with other locations and organisations in the supply chain for inventory management and total traceability.

​As effective component tracking, data capture and networking becomes more important and accessible in the digital age it is critical that businesses throughout the supply chain adopt this smart way of working. Implementing systems and technology that enable traceability not only help to achieve maximum process control and optimise performance, but also can be a key factor that customers are looking for when awarding contracts. Track and trace capabilities can help firms to stand out and get an edge in today’s increasingly competitive marketplace.