A long, long time ago, in another place, we went over to a new labelling system and decided to add barcodes even though we would not use them immediately but we thought it would make the labels future proof.
At a later date we got some barcode scanners that added in between the keyboard and PC to make data entry easy and typo proof.
We then discovered a check sum hidden at the end of the barcode, so it differed from the visual number that was bar-coded. This number had already been entered manually in to the database. This made any scanning impossible to use with the existing data. And if you scanned the bar code in to add a new asset, you could not guess at the checksum if you were using a non-scanner keyboard to access the database.
At the time we were using the scanners to enter the serial numbers from Alaris (IVAC) pumps as we had hundreds of new ones to add to the database. Again the visible numbers differed slightly from the scanned ones. Again to do with checksums.
Take great care with barcodes and the visible data it represents.
The scanners we used were chosen as they read many barcode formats and converted them to data as if they had been entered manually on the keyboard so we did not have to worry about the database -We thought. However the scanners added a carriage return at the end of the data which upset some of the database fields. This could not be configged out.
Barcodes are a good idea but need to be implemented carefully. Learn from our mistakes.
Robert
