Piece history and inventory accuracy are assured. A robust hot mill bar coding system requires special labels, special attachment techniques, and an understanding of the unique requirements of the hot mills. Bar code identification is preferable to using only man readable characters because automatic identification with bar codes virtually eliminates misreading and transposition errors . In the mill environment , manual reading and entry errors frequently occur, as often as once in every 300 readings. Computerized databases are only as accurate as the data they are fed.
Bar codes can reduce the reading errors to one in several million readings.
Accurate bar code reading can be done anywhere in the mill using relatively inexpensive industry standard bar code scanners. The following discussion has the objective of assisting in the design and implementation of a system. The bars have different separations creating the familiar picket fence codes. The data are encrypted in both the bar widths and the separations between bars. Hidden is the fact that bar codes use different symbologies .