Articles
Matthews uses clean EANnet® data for label printing (June/July 2006)
EANnet's clean, reliable data for trading partners has found another use - for the printing of barcodes, use-by dates and labels.
A system devised by GS1 Alliance Partner, Matthews Intelligent Identification downloads data from EANnet fields into networking software, IDsnet, which in turn is fed directly to production line coders and labelling systems for product traceability. The benefits, says Matthews' Mark Dingley, are very similar to those of EANnet for trading partners.
"Traditionally, each in-line printer or coder is a stand-alone unit and production workers need to enter the data manually, which can lead to errors and possibly, product recalls," he said. "We've extended EANnet's capabilities so that manual entry is no longer needed and those errors are eliminated."
"Imagine you've got a chocolate bar production line. The production worker simply picks up the first chocolate and scans its barcode. IDsnet responds with a description of the product and the worker confirms that it's correct. From there, the system checks for the 'day's advance' to generate a use-by or best-before date, which is then confirmed by the operator, and printing begins."
A similar process produces a print and apply label for cartons and because EANnet also contains information about pallet capacities, the same system can produce a serial shipping Container Code (SSCC) label.
GS1's John Hearn commented, "It's great to see the value of EANnet being extended by this clever development. It demonstrates one of the many uses of clean, accurate and validated data throughout the supply chain".
