[AT] This might come in handy while shopping for tractor parts

Dean VP deanvp at att.net
Wed Jan 19 11:35:57 PST 2011


Charlie,

IBM (Inferior But Marketable :-)) played a very large part in the UPC Council that established the UPC code. Allot of compromises had to be made due to the difficulty that packaging companies had in printing the code on their respective products. As it was mentioned in Gene's contribution in this thread, it was still quite difficult. Many of the early symbols printed on certain products were unreadable. Packages such as potato chip bags, gum packages and cigarette packages created additional challenges. But since UPC still thrives today in the Grocery Industry it is a testimony to those who brought the technology to bear. 

As an interesting side note, I spent most of my Bar Code career in the Industrial market as opposed to the grocery market and I had the interesting opportunity to introduce Bar Code technology to the Federal Government to help track their assets. GAO & the DOD were instrumental in getting Bar Code first implemented in the US. We spent a considerable amount of sales effort in getting a program called LOGMARS (Logistics Applications of Automated Marking and Reading Symbols) established using code 39 which was headquartered in Ogden Utah. The Logistics branch of the military. The overall objective was to be able to track and locate all military equipment and supplies using Barcode(Code 39) technology which took several years to implement.  The scanning technology actually preceded the military's computer systems capability of knowing where things were. 

Following Desert Storm, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf did some consulting for Sears Roebuck relative to their logistic issues and he was asked in a Seminar how Bar Code technology had helped the military during Desert Storm.  His comment was rather funny (actually a real problem) but quite accurate relative to the state of Government (DOD) computer systems during that period of time.  He was quoted as saying something like: "  I knew exactly what equipment/material/supplies I had to prosecute the war, except I didn't know where it was! " 

PS: The first successful Scan symbol was a Bullseye type symbol.  Omnidirectional scan.  But very difficult to print successfully on grocery packages. The first implementation of Bar Code in the USA was to track RR cars. At any given moment in time a percentage of RR cars are lost. So an attempt was made to add a large Bar Code Symbol to each RR car and scanners were mounted on poles along the tracks. The intention was to scan RR cars as they went by to allow instantaneous knowledge of where RR cars were at any given time.   The concept failed because the Bar code symbols got very dirty out in the elements on the RR Car and became unreadable and the electronic scanners of that era could not handle the changes in ambient temperature that occurred at each pole. However, medical applications proved successful such as tracking blood samples and libraries were early adopters to track book check-in and check-out. These proved successful even before UPC Code was successfully used in Grocery stores.  The lost RR car issue is identical to lost rental cars. At any given time the rental car agencies would be unable to locate a fairly significant amount of their rental cars. First we tried labels on Bumpers. Didn't work, same problem as RR car labels. The solution was to affix the labels on the inside of the windshields but that created problems for the reading equipment due to the thickness of the glass. New optical reading equipment had to be designed to offer greater depth of field. That significantly reduced the lost rental car problem. 

Dean VP 
Apache Junction, AZ

"If pilots' vision were as bad as economists', Amtrak would be profitable."


-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com [mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of charlie hill
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 11:32 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] This might come in handy while shopping for tractor parts

Well it's obvious I don't know much about them but I will claim one bit of 
connection.  I had a good friend named J. Kitt Sawyer who was an electrical 
engineer with IBM in the NC Research Triangle.  He was on the team that 
invented the things.  Unfortunately he died suddenly a few years ago.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Gene's Wowway e-mail
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 12:24 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] This might come in handy while shopping for tractor parts

Dean, I enjoyed your recap of the UPC symbol.  I was on another side of the
UPC intro in the early 70s---flexible packaging, primarily food packaging
materials.  The grief we went through learning how to print those *&(&^$*
things is  unforgettable!!

-----Original Message----- 
From: Dean VP
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 10:52 AM
To: 'Antique tractor email discussion group'
Subject: Re: [AT] This might come in handy while shopping for tractor parts

Having spent much of my career in the Bar Code Industry I can comment on
this a bit. First when discussing Bar code one needs to identify the version
of Bar Code under discussion. In this case UPC is being discussed but there
are several versions of UPC Bar Code. In the USA and Canada the 12 digit
version (A) is used along with several shorter versions for specific
products, priced imbedded codes or variable weight products.  Libraries and
books have a version also. But the most generally common version in the US
(version A) is the 12 digit version. It Does Not contain a country of origin
identifier imbedded in the code. There is a version however that does have
an imbedded country of origin in it and that is the 13 digit version called
EAN (European Article Numbering) which obviously is used in Europe. I'm not
up to date on whether the convention is being followed religiously (retired
for 12 years) as to whether it is country of manufacturer or home country of
seller.

The UPC code is not a very strong error checking code and succeeds in the
grocery market w/o too many reading errors only because the code the scanner
reads also must be on file on the checkout scanning system's hard disk. This
reduces checkout errors to a level acceptable to users as well as customers.
There are more read errors in the checkout lanes than what the industry
prefers to talk about.

That level of error in reading is not acceptable for industrial applications
so other codes other than UPC were invented with stronger error checking
such as Interleaved 2 of 5, Code 11, Code 39, etc. Code 39 was widely used
in industrial applications because it is a fully alphanumeric code and has a
very low error rate whereas UPC is numeric only with a higher read error
rate. The UPC code needed to make some compromises to allow ease of printing
on multiple food product packaging materials, shapes and sizes. In many
cases industrial and some consumer applications have moved to using Higher
Density square codes. Where considerably higher density of information
within the code is achieved.  Now, industry is moving to RFID, Radio
Frequency Identification where a tag is attached to higher value products
and is read at a distance using RF signals. The tags have dropped in cost
over the last few years but are still too expensive to be used in low cost
products such as those sold in a grocery store.

I was Director of POS operations for a company that installed the second
grocery store UPC scanning system in the US in around 1973/74 time frame.
NCR was the first company to install a UPC Grocery Store scanning system in
the US at about the same time frame. At that time we were really pushing the
state of the current technology and things didn't always go as planned. Both
scanning as well as computer technology has improved dramatically since
then.  The capability improved dramatically quickly but something unusual
happened to slow things down in the Grocery industry for a while. This only
time in my life where I have seen this happen. The labor unions and the
consumers formed a coalition to try to stop the implementation of UPC code
and bar code scanning in grocery stores. Several false rumors were started
that confused the consumers about how accurate the systems were going to be
and how much the technology was going to reduce labor requirements within
the grocery industry. It took a few years to settle out and then there was a
rush to implement scanning by all grocery stores.

Grocery stores work on very thin profit margins so even a small improvement
in product pricing accuracy at the checkout stand has a dramatic impact on
the stores profitability.  Reducing a thing called "under-rings" at the
checkout stand would sometimes double store profits and pay for the scanning
equipment in just a few short months. In the 1973/74 time frame each
checkout lane with scanning cost about $80,000

Dean VP
Apache Junction, AZ

"If pilots' vision were as bad as economists', Amtrak would be profitable."

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Mike Sloane
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 8:18 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] This might come in handy while shopping for tractor parts

It is not true, unfortunately. See:

<http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1824191/what_upc_barcode_numbers_mean.html>

Mike

On 1/19/2011 7:51 AM, charlie hill wrote:
> Can you differentiate which one is made in Taiwan or  China ?
>
> If the first 3 digits of the barcode are 690, 691  or 692, the product is
> MADE IN CHINA.
> 471 is Made in  Taiwan .
>
> This is our right to know, but the government and related departments
> never
> educate the public, therefore we have to educate ourselves.
>
> Nowadays, Chinese businessmen know that consumers do not prefer products
> "MADE IN CHINA ", so they don't show from which country it is made.
>
> However, you may now refer to the barcode -remember if the first 3 digits
> are for China&  Taiwan , and most other countries have 2 digits:
>
> 00 - 09 ...   USA&   CANADA
> 690-691-692 ... MADE IN  CHINA
> 471  ... Made in TAIWAN
> 49 ... JAPAN
> 30 - 37 ...   FRANCE
> 40 - 44 ...   GERMANY
> 50 ...   UK
>
> BUY USA&  CANADIAN MADE by watching for "0"
> at the beginning of the number which is USA and “09” is Canada .
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