Barcode Technology and Warehouse Management

A successful enterprise often needs to regularly understand what kind of products customers need and provide them with low-cost, high-quality, and high-performance products. They welcome customers' special requests as an opportunity that sets them apart from their competitors. In recent years, due to increased competitive pressure, by the mid-1990s, providing good customer service to businesses had become an advantage. To win in competition, enterprises must change their focus on the trade cycle. The current trade cycle should be seen as customer driven - with the market as the leader, and emphasis should be placed on establishing business partnerships within the trade cycle. The most important characteristic of a successful enterprise is the degree of customer drive, which wins complete customer satisfaction by providing high-quality products and services, on-time delivery, low cost, and high quality.

In order to achieve effective customer service, enterprises must have the ability to quickly respond to their customers' special business needs. It is particularly important to adopt selective shipping channels in order to reduce inventory and improve order fulfillment rates. Due to geographical and other factors, directly shipping from suppliers to customers is a commonly used business model. In addition, it is necessary to pay attention to optimizing inventory and equipment. The utilization of various resources and spaces to achieve effective management of logistics operations.

The actual layout of the warehouse must be optimized. Match it with the process and type of operators, material receiving, picking up and sending through the main inventory area. Correctly defining the geographical layout of a warehouse can help reduce the movement time of goods, improve warehousing efficiency, reduce costs, and save expenses. The geographical layout of a warehouse can be defined as two-dimensional, three-dimensional, free-form, or modular. For example, the main warehouse is generally defined as two-dimensional: channels, shelves, and cargo layers. The location address can be in two dimensions. The storage location can be defined according to storage capacity, pallet type, storage container, shelf type, and special purpose. The types of goods handling can be bulk storage, temporary storage, return temporary storage, etc. Batch control of products is a critical warehousing and processing project. Products should have batch numbers to facilitate quality tracking, control expired materials, and ensure that the products delivered to customers meet quality requirements.

It can be seen that today's warehouse operations and inventory control operations have become very diverse. Complexity has become increasingly difficult to process through manual memorization. If the correct procurement, acceptance, quality assurance, and delivery cannot be guaranteed, it will result in wasting time, generating inventory, delaying delivery, increasing costs, and ultimately losing opportunities to serve customers. Adopting barcode technology. Combined with information processing technology, it can ensure the accuracy of inventory levels, necessary inventory levels, and the movement of materials in the warehouse. Coordinate with procurement and shipment to ensure optimal inflow, storage, and outflow of products from the warehouse.

The most common technology topic in warehouses today is barcoding, accompanied by data storage, transmission, intelligent software, computer platforms, and communication networks. No matter where the logistics flows, we can automatically record the flow of logistics. The combination of barcode technology and information processing technology helps us to make reasonable and efficient use of warehouse space, providing customers with the best service in the fastest, most accurate, and lowest cost way possible.

Here are two examples: one is an economical and easy to implement warehouse management plan; Another is the management plan for the three-dimensional warehouse.

The first option is to provide written reports for each type of goods and location in the warehouse, and to conduct periodic inventory checks on the storage area. This scheme is very practical for inventory management in the retail industry, as well as for drug inventory management in hospitals. Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of the scheme.

When designing specific plans, different software and barcode devices should be selected according to different requirements. For example, it is necessary to understand:

Does the customer require continuous communication between the barcode scanner and the host?

Is batch processing sufficient for data?

How much data is collected in a day?

Is it continuous scanning or timed scanning?

How often should the results of data processing be reported, hourly, daily, or monthly, to send inventory data to the database.

How are the physical locations in the warehouse identified?

When, where, and by whom will the barcode labels of data items be used? Will there be any other users who need to scan the labels after they leave the warehouse.

For the system shown in Figure 1, the operation is as follows: the warehouse staff uses a handheld barcode terminal to scan the storage location. After scanning the storage location number, they scan the corresponding item number (such as part number) of the goods on it, enter the quantity of the item, and then scan the second storage location and the goods on it. Repeat the above steps until all the goods in the warehouse are counted. Then transmit the data collected from the barcode terminal to the PC through the communication interface.

All software used in the system is divided into two parts: one part resides in the barcode terminal, and the other part is on the PC (or other small computers, hosts). The software in the barcode terminal only completes the data collection function, which is relatively simple, and most users can program it themselves. The software in the PC should include a database system and warehouse management software.

The requirements for barcode terminals to complete data collection functions are not high, and do not require very complex functions (such as the ZZ9801 machine). There is a 4-line xl6 character display to show the collected data and program menu; Enter the number of items on one keyboard; A data storage device with a certain capacity (256KB~512KB or larger); The barcode scanning part can be pen based (such as HP305 light pen), CCD based (such as Cipher Lar l021 CCD), or laser gun based (usually laser gun should be used because both light pen and CCD scanner are contact scanning and cannot adapt to warehouse operations - Editor's note); An RS-232 serial port serves as a bidirectional communication interface with the PC. The programs in the terminal are downloaded from the PC, while the data collected by the terminal is uploaded to the PC.

When warehouse operations increase, the number of barcode terminals can be increased. But PCs don't necessarily need to be added, of course, the configuration of PCs should be appropriate, such as 486 or 586 machines, hard drives of 500 megabytes or more, etc.

In addition, a barcode printer needs to be configured in the system to print various labels: labels for storage locations and shelves; Labels used for item identification, indicating batch number and quantity. Of course, we need to first decide how to label these items, whether it's labeling each item, unit, box... or some other solution. In addition, it is necessary to label the warehouse staff for easy management. How to design barcodes and label formats are all tasks that need to be completed during the planning phase.

The advantages of this system are low cost and flexibility. For users who are not familiar with barcode technology, this can be used as a starting point.

Another example is the management system of a certain entity's warehouse. The main warehouse utilizes a building area of 3200 square meters and a height of 5.5 meters. There are 5 lanes, including 4 double extension lanes and 1 single extension lane; The size of the cargo space is approximately 1.5x1.5x1.1 meters, with a total of 3000 units and a maximum of 7 floors; The size of the cargo box is 1.2 X0.7x0.7 meters, with a gross weight of 215 kilograms; The tray size is 1.25x1.47x0.08 meters, with 2 cargo boxes placed on each tray. The warehouse has a throughput capacity of 120 cargo spaces per hour; 80 storage locations per hour for inbound and 40 storage locations per hour for outbound.

Storage operation: After unloading the cargo boxes from the containers by a trailer, use the trailer to place 2 boxes at a time in the designated direction on the empty pallets at the storage platform. The goods are recognized by a barcode recognition system to identify the pallet number, and the computer system controls the conveyor system to deliver the pallet to the designated storage compartment in the aisle. Then, the aisle truck delivers the cargo boxes on the pallet to the designated storage location.

Outbound operation: Input data into the warehouse management system based on the outbound operation order, issue outbound operation instructions according to the outbound principle (such as first in, first out, etc.), and the aisle car will deliver the goods from the designated storage location to the outbound cargo rack according to the instructions, and then the conveyor system will deliver them to the designated outbound platform.

The system uses a fixed barcode reader (such as TLMS-3500 RV) to automatically identify the pallet numbers passing through the inbound/outbound conveyor system, and uploads the signal to the computer system in real time. After confirmation, the system commands the conveyor line to send the cargo boxes on the pallets into/out of the corresponding tunnels and storage locations.

The system is centered around a computer monitoring machine and directly connected to the conveyor line control system through an RS-232 port. Connect the outbound barcode reader through an 8-port communication manager and directly connect it to the serial module of the programmable controller; Connect the warehouse and tunnel barcode readers through a 16 port communication manager, and directly connect to the monitoring machine through the RS-232 port.

Adopting this system can improve the accuracy of goods outbound/inbound, ensure high product quality, and also change the high labor intensity of manual handling that existed in the original system. The situation of low work efficiency.

Barcode technology is like a link that connects the information that occurs at various stages of the product lifecycle, enabling the tracking of the entire process from production to sales, and putting enterprises in a favorable position in fierce market competition. And barcoding can ensure the accuracy of data. Using barcode devices is both convenient and fast, and the efficiency of automatic recognition technology cannot be compared to keyboards.

Sharp Electronics in Japan has adopted a barcode based warehouse management system for the past four years, resulting in an increase in the number of warehouse operations by two digits, but no increase in the number of personnel, and achieving 100% inventory accuracy; The difference rate between shipping and purchasing operations has been reduced to zero, and some labor-intensive tasks have also been compressed. In the past, paper-based operations resulted in approximately 200 errors per month in shipping and warehousing. After these errors occurred, it often took several months to track these differences to avoid exacerbating their impact. Nowadays, when each item of goods is in or out of the warehouse, the operator immediately uses a handheld CCD laser gun to read the barcode on the goods, and sends the data to the computer in a timely manner through a data collector; Some barcode readers are directly installed on the elevator to avoid errors.

In modern society, the market economy determines that the status of warehouses is not a matter of necessity, but rather an essential infrastructure for the transfer and storage of goods between the market and modern enterprises in the market economy. Warehouse management realizes modern management methods, and barcode technology is a priority means to ensure optimized warehouse operations, fully utilize warehouse space, provide customers with high-quality services quickly and conveniently, and create foreign exchange and value-added