Meeting custom label requirements

Bar code labeling software allows you to quickly and efficiently manage the complexities of custom labeling requirements, regardless of the printer.

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 12/20/2006

Custom bar code labeling is a fact of life for almost any manufacturer or distributor today. In the retail supply chain, for instance, every customer serviced by a DC is likely to have its own requirements. That means managing multiple labels and formats for the same product, depending upon who the customer is and where the shipment is going.

What’s more, every bar code label printer manufacturer has its own unique language and printer commands.

That’s where bar code labeling software comes in.

“Bar code label design and print software is a middleware solution that fills the gap between end users’ business applications, like a warehouse management system (WMS) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and the interface to the printer,” says Harold Boe, president and chief technology officer for Seagull Scientific. “The solutions simplify the label design process, manage the different label formats and communicate that information across multiple printer families.”

Communication with a variety of printers may be one of the most important functions of bar code label software.

“Every printer family has a proprietary language,” says Dana Anderson, president and chief technology officer for Loftware Inc. “Integrating those with a WMS or ERP system can be a challenge, which used to lock an end user into a specific printer family.”

Instead, bar code labeling software:

• takes the information from a business application in a printer neutral format,
• merges that information into the right label format for the job, and
• converts it to the proprietary language for the destination printer.