BAR-CODES: MORE THAN THICK BLACK LINES

Osinachi, "did you know that it was with a total disbelieve that I left the new mega shopping mall down the road ? The Mall's manger declined to accept my well packaged chin-chin on the ground that they do not have bar codes and consequently cannot be accepted into their store. Please! tell me what business has a blind man with the moon? For God-sake, in what way are they going to support the SMEs?"

Smith, "I've severally warned you on why you need to do things differently and in compliance with modern trends. Regardless of the size of your business, it is imperative to do things in the most acceptable way!"

According to Wikipedia, a bar-code is an optical, machine-readable representation of data; the data usually describes something about the object that carries the bar-code.

The bar-code helps to identify a product and its price as well as other useful information when placed under a scanner. In-fact, the encoded information can only be read with the use of a scanner.

In the opening scenario,it is most likely that the mall operates a point-of-sales management, where the items in the Shopper's cart are scanned to identify their respective prices, in an attempt to generate an invoice/receipt by the sales attendant. Thus, it is practically impossible for the sales attendants to know all the prices of the hundreds of items in the mall. Therefore, bar-coding the items/products is absolutely necessary!

Other importance of bar coding are; 

1. It helps to track inventory- For example, it assists in placing a re-order. Most consumer goods are fast moving items and there is the need to replenish the stock as soon as possible to avoid stock-out.The bar code system helps to automatically identify low-level stocks and request for a reorder. 

2. Reduces alterations-when there is a price increase or decrease, this could be done without any form of alteration on the product or shelf.

3.It equally saves time and reduces error- bar code is of tremendous assistance when it comes to stock-taking. For instance, instead of engaging 10 inventory staff for stock-taking in a medium sized mall , with the aid of bar codes this could be reduced to 2 or 3 inventory staff.
Also, with bar codes the level of human error is reduced to the barest minimum.The bar codes are likely to have captured the opening stock and diminish same at every sale. Thus, have a greater tendency of accuracy.

4.It helps regulatory authorities- Sometimes, the regulatory authorities makes it mandatory for bar codes to be printed on products, particularly consumables and drugs as in the case of NAFDAC in Nigeria. This helps consumers to check some necessary details about the product and to combat counterfeits.


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