Barcode Printers « L-Tron Direct Blog

Archive for the ‘Barcode Printers’ Category

What’s my ROI (Return on Investment)?

When presented with an opportunity to automate your warehouse operations, what are the chances you’ll be asked, “What’s the ROI?” Not to worry, calculating ROI on process improvements may not seem as daunting as you think.

The first step in determining the ROI to improve your warehouse operations is to take a look at your process today – whether it is a manual, paper-driven process, or a semi-automated process. From the receiving dock to the quality department, to inventory and pick, pack and ship, where do the challenges, bottlenecks and errors most likely occur? Chances are your labor force spends a lot of time looking for correct inventory

Mobile Printing Is Transformational, From Consumer/Retailer to Citizen/Government Interactions

Mobility of printing – the ability to bring the printer to the task versus bringing the task to the printer – has the potential to change countless aspects of our lives, whether in the context of a retailer/consumer sale on one end of the spectrum, or of a government agency/citizen interaction on the other. Even the simple ability to generate a printed invoice, receipt or citation – on the fly and in real time – can be transformational.

Forward-thinking retailers are embracing the concept of the mobile point of sale, abandoning the constraints of the rigid model of fixed counters and check-out points. As payment options expand beyond cash and card-based

Retail 2D – Creating Customer Service Points

I’ve already dedicated several posts to Retail 2D, a white paper written by London-based Honeywell Marketing Manager, Enzo Capobianco, in large part because it opened my eyes more fully to the dynamics of the mobile-oriented consumer and the resulting potential of mobile marketing strategies. Capobianco terms them the New Connected Shoppers, and I agree that being so thoroughly connected is a defining characteristic. Mobile technology delivers a real-time, location-centric flood of retail offers even while aiding shoppers in organizing and differentiating those options. Information is power and the New Connected Shoppers are the most fully informed yet.

Capobianco introduces the concept of transforming the Point-of-Sale into

Wireless Printing as a Management Tool

Whether they learn it from a seminar or glean it instead from years of hard-earned experience, most seasoned managers eventually realize that, when it comes to motivation and skill, they have four basic categories of employees:

Those who have neither the motivation nor skills required of the job,
Those who have the motivation, but not the skills required of the job,
Those who lack the motivation, but have the skills required of the job, and
Those who have both the motivation and skills required of the job.

You may know each grouping by other labels, but you’ve undoubtedly encountered more than one example of these four combinations.

If you’re stuck managing members of the first

Overloaded Retail Return Processing – Wireless Printing After the Sale

Because I am primarily a visual learner, I’m helped most by those written descriptions that allow me to envision in concrete images the various stages of the processes they describe, and I had just that experience while reading Zebra Technologies’ white paper, Wireless Printing Delivers Efficiency and Cost Savings in Retail, as it described how wireless printers are used to expedite the processing of returns. Those resulting mental images further reinforced a key lesson of that paper: That it is often far more efficient to bring the printer to the work than it is to bring the work to the printer.

Retail enterprises have traditionally processed returns at a dedicated front-of-store

Plant Nursery Wireless Printing, Logistics Applications

Credit: Photo taken by Muffet

The village of Forrest Hill has less than 500 citizens, yet is home to more than 60 commercial nurseries, most of which are large, wholesale/retail operations representing the culmination of multi-generation family endeavors. The typical Forrest Hill nursery encompasses business functions ranging from production to warehousing to direct wholesale and retail sales to multi-state wholesale distribution. From the raw materials of plastic pots, soil, seeds, water, land, cooperative climate, minimal machinery and ample labor, these nurseries produce, mature, store and distribute their perishable inventory, and most perform each of these steps in much the same way their grandparents did.

As a rule, seeds are

Wireless Printing in Retail Applications

In a recent blog post inspired by Zebra Technologies’ white paper, Wireless Printing Delivers Efficiency and Cost Savings in Retail, I recalled the bad-old days when the mobility of every electrical appliance was limited by the length of its heavy power cord. As for wireless communications, those were all one-way exchanges consisting of transmissions rated in kilowatts of ERPs and received by furniture-sized home appliances also plugged into wall outlets. When portable, battery-powered transistor radios were introduced, I felt sure life could get no better – radio went with me everywhere! Anyway, those were just some of the memories Zebra’s white paper conjured.

I shop frequently at a local

Wireless Printing, Cutting the Cord

Which makes more sense you, bringing the work to the printer or bringing the printer to the work? There have been a number of sea-change technological breakthroughs within the lifetimes of those of us who’ve been around since the 50s and earlier, and more than a few of them have to do with cutting the cord.

Remember the single corded telephone that sat in the wall nook in the central hall of the typical home? If you wanted to talk on the phone, you went to the phone; the phone did not come to you, and it certainly didn’t travel everywhere you went.

Remember the corded electric drill? Sure, I still have

Warehouse or Greenhouse? Go Green with Paperless Operations.

The main objective of ‘going green’ is that it’s good for the environment, but when it comes down to it; businesses generally have their focus on creating greater efficiencies throughout the organization.

Paperless environments are important to all facets of the business, but one area that would benefit greatly is the warehouse.

Consider the following facts about the paper and ink industry (from GoPaperless Solutions, 2010):

Paper consumption has tripled since 1960 and Americans generate 85 million tons of paper into the waste stream
The U.S. pulp and paper industry is the 2nd largest consumer of energy
The average U.S. officer worker prints 10,000 pages per year

With new technologies emerging, our business culture

Managing Event Security with Zebra’s Conference Badge Solutions; Organizing a 6000-Year-Old Sport

Among the daily pleasures of my job is constant exposure to the delightfully unexpected. As a case in point, I did not awaken today with the expectation of learning the finer points of event organization and security from the sport of dragon-boat racing. And yet, yep, dragon-boat racing.

The Chinese fascination with dragons predates recorded history, but eventually found expression in highly ornate long boats. Best evidence dates the origin of the dragon boat to about 6000 years ago. Of course, our need to compete is as timeless as our need to decorate and dragon-boat racing evolved from human drama some 4000 years later.

Legend has it that when beloved poet, Qu