NGR's Blog

The supply chain management has been focusing on squeezing cost and improving operations for decades. In the 1980s, there was a lot of focus on just-in-time production, lean manufacturing and discrete systems. In the recent decade, the obsession about high quality goods, cost minimization and flawless distribution has been made possible by the advancement in technology.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, as a part of a broader spectrum of sensor-based technologies, has dramatically revolutionized the supply chain management. Basically RFID is simply an enabling technology that has the potential of helping retailers provide the right product at the right place at the right time, thus maximizing sales and profits. RFID provides the technology to identify uniquely each container, pallet, case and item being manufactured, shipped and sold, thus providing the building blocks for increased visibility throughout the supply chain.

In a supermarket, more than 90% items are recognized by barcode reader / scanner. We have all noticed that, whenever the cashier of the supermarket scans a barcode using a laser device, item description and price appears in the computer screen. Do you know how the magic works?

A barcode, is a code using multiple lines and spaces of varying widths, designed to represent some alpha-numeric characters. The barcodes generally are read with a laser scanner, which measures reflected light and interprets the code into numbers and letters. The barcode scanner passes the data to the attached computer or stores it to it’s internal memory.