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I am to develop an inventory tracking system (e.g. keyboards, mice, phones, etc.) I am wondering if it is possible to use 1D barcodes UPC standard for this, will I be able to track each individual item or can I only categories the assets?

Suppaa
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    do you have less than 100,000,000,000 items? – Ewan Oct 17 '19 at 14:38
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    The bar code will give you an id, you will have to assign meaning to that id yourself (link it to an item). Categorization is a separate issue, the id will not help you with that. Although EAN codes were specifically designed for food retail and include both a country code and a manufacturer code (I am not sure about UPC), to your inventory system none of this matters. You just work with a number you know to uniquely identify a particular item. It may be printed on the box by the manufacturer or you may put the sticker on the item yourself. Either way, to you it is just a number. – Martin Maat Oct 17 '19 at 14:56
  • There is not much "software architecture" inherent in this question. Does it look like it is fit for "project management"? – rwong Oct 18 '19 at 05:19

1 Answers1

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Short version

I am to develop an inventory tracking system (e.g. keyboards, mice, phones, etc.)

You can start with a requirements analysis of the tracking system, without pinning down what technology or barcode format to use.

As part of the requirements analysis, you will decide what infrastructure and capabilities would be needed to meet the goals by making use of the information (that is to be attached to inventory items). Without that infrastructure, the information (e.g. barcode label) itself wouldn't serve any purpose.

Some basic motivations might be: tracking the whereabouts (location / position), inventory accounting (tracking the number of items), tracking the usage or current owner or persons responsible, security i.e. loss prevention (early loss detection).

(If you can share what your motivations are, this answer can be tailored better to suit your needs.)

I am wondering if it is possible to use 1D barcodes UPC standard for this,

You can use a 1D barcode format.

You can use the same barcode format that UPC uses, but it is highly unlikely you will want to pay hundreds of US dollars to register unique product codes for your items, if you are not in a business selling your own products for profit.

There are many more 1D barcode formats. Refer to Wikipedia articles on Barcode and GS1 (standards organization).

will I be able to track each individual item or can I only categories the assets?

It is your choice. You can devise your in-house item identification code scheme, convert them into barcode, print the barcode alongside the human-readable string on labels, and apply those labels to your items.

After the short version

After the requirements analysis, there should also be an analysis on the constraints.

To give a few (extreme) examples about constraints: if there is no network (neither Ethernet nor WiFi) and no cellular signal in the warehouse, or if the use of light is forbidden in the warehouse, or if there is no electricity, or if the environment is too harsh or unsuitable for electronic devices, these constraints need to be clearly documented in the analysis.

There are different barcode formats. Barcodes encode character strings; different barcode formats have their own character subset, therefore read about those. Read about Code 128.

In developing and deploying anything that use barcodes, the main considerations are:

  • Decide the usage scope of the barcode. Is it for:
    • Strictly internal use,
    • Used by business partners also,
    • Used by general public, such as retail channels
  • Decide what information the barcode should carry:
    • A unique category code
    • A unique item identification code (two items from the same category will have different codes, as the code's purpose is to uniquely identify the item)
    • A large amount of information needed for business operations (example: a shipping address barcode may contain the entire address, requiring use of high density barcode formats.)
  • Decide how barcode terminals and devices should use the data.
    • Dumb devices must be attached to a computer in order to be useful, as all capabilities are to be implemented on the computer, not on the device.
    • Capture devices will remember the barcodes scanned, which must then be transferred to a computer to access the capabilities. These are battery-powered for extended hours of operations between having to unload at a computer.
    • Smart devices will have data input/output interfaces, so that most capabilities can be performed with the smart device.
    • Smartphones, whether company-owned or bring-your-own-devices (BYOD), also count as smart devices. To use smartphones, a mobile application may need to be developed. Also, smartphone cameras are less reliable in capturing barcodes compared to dedicated scanning or imaging sensors. There are modification kits that adds a dedicated barcode sensor to smartphones.
  • Decide the capabilities, scope, and implementation budgets for the infrastructure.

Projects like this are prone to scope creep. The best way to de-risk such projects would be to have a good "tinkerer" trying different existing technologies at a low cost to see how things would work out, before spending money to buy equipment or approving a budget for software development work.

rwong
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  • Thank you this has been very helpful. "unlikely you will want to pay hundreds of US dollars to register unique product codes for your items" you are correct here; if I were to buy a label printer could I configure it to generate unique IDs without having to edit the ID for each label manually (as all the examples I have seen online edit it manually). For example set it up to print 1000 labels and each label contains its own unique ID. – Suppaa Oct 18 '19 at 10:05