We currently use Wasp Labeler 5.0 to create bacodes from a spreadsheet of information queried using Addins. What are others doing?

My goal is to creat some sort of program that will prompt a user to enter Company, Location, and Item and have a thermal printer in the storeroom print out a lable on demand. But I'm not sure how to go about this. Any Ideas?

Jon Athey
Information Systems Specialist
Materials Management
MidMichigan Health
4005 Orchard Drive
Midland, Michigan 48670

Jon,
This will not be the most helpful answer...I don't use Add-Ins for our labeling needs. I don't suppose that there is anything inherently wrong with the application for this purpopse, but I had already built one solution using a series of csv's and Access.

Recently, I converted that project to Crystal. That was not my most productive use of time...When I developed the Crystal reports, I thought I had made a huge step forward--my Access tables are hampered by the fact that the tables need to be refreshed periodically, and Crystal is pretty much current. As it turns out, few people in our system have Crystal Licenses; and most of those that do really aren't worried about par/inventory/patient charge labels. Oh well...

I am happy to talk about either the Access or Crystal label applications I developed, if you think that might help. As for using the thermal printer, I am not sure I could help.

Just let me know,
rw

Jon:

You didn't mention if you had the Mobile Supply Chain Management products (mobile par and cycle count, specifically). If you do have it then maybe you haven't come across the function that lets you print a barcode label on demand for any item in your item master? I believe Lawson only had specific printers supported to do this.

If you don't have the product then I was no help whatsoever.

-GW

No, we don't have the Mobile Par and Cycle Count/Supply Chain Management. We're looking at possibly bringing this onboard when we updgrade to v9. The on demand barcode printing you mentioned sounds interesting but the item master doesn't supply all the information we need for the label such as par level, location uom, and replenishment source. Is this possible as well?

I don't think all of those fields were on the label by default. We aren't even using it ourselves. We haven't barcoded any of our locations.

There are lots of barcode printing software products out there, some of them can be downloaded and tried out on a trial basis. If you can connect to your tables then you can design your own labels and put on them whatever you want.

Barcodes are really just a font. Have you looked for any fonts from Microsoft that you could maybe tie into MS Access and build an app from there?

I agree... The barcoding symbology is simply a different font. That said, though, just as there are multiple versions of standard Roman script, there are several versions of barcoding font.

That said, the font that I use for my Access and Crystal projects is "3 of 9" with the readable number underneath. Specifically, I use "Wasp 39 LC", distributed by Wasp Bar Code Inc. This is not a specific endorsement of Wasp products, any "3 of 9" font will work.

Once you have the fonts installed, there are a couple of considerations when "scratch building" your barcodes. The primary is that you will need to place an asterisk (*) at the beginning and end of the value to be read. This indicates the start and end of the "word". For whatever reason, THAT alone took me a LONG time to figure out.

The other issue is barcode size. I think the two limitations here are a) how fine your printer can print (an outcome of DPI), and B) how close/far will your staff be scanning the label. These you can play with once you get started.

Hope that helps some...
rw

p.s. - If you do buy the Wasp product, don't over do the purchase. I bought the "FontWare Pro+" edition thinking that the "add-ins" they offered would be a big help. Nothing against Wasp, but it's font... As long as you can change from Verdana to Tahoma to Times New Roman, you can work with the barcode font.

We are viewing and online demo of Lawson's MSCM system tomorrow. Hope to have a better idea on which way to go after that. I already saw the web-x session and it looks like it could work for us. We'll see.

Jon

Jon:

Be sure to pay attention to what will print on the label by default, and if there is any way to modify it yourselves without too much headache. Also be sure to ask which label printers Lawson supports. Last I recall that printer list was pretty short.

Lastly, I don't believe the product had a way to print labels for a whole par location at one time. But like I said before, we didn't barcode anyting yet and I may not be remembering it correctly. Good luck.

-GW

It is correct that the supported label printers are few (as in two: the Intermec 3400D and the Zebra 105SL). Alone, this would be an issue, but beyond that I have a separate concern.

So here are my general concerns:
1 - These printers are very purpose-specific. You are going to spend between $1,000 and $2,000 for a printer that prints bar-coded labels. I just saw refurb prices on the Intermec at around $800. For the same price you can get a really good all-in-one printing solution. And, since this is label-specific, it will probably be sitting right next to the general-use laser printer (which can do a fine job printing bar-coded labels).

2 - The label stock is very purpose-specific. I have no idea what the price of a roll or pack of these labels cost, but the label rolls for the ancient Datamax printers we have used were pretty expensive (compared to an equivalent number of address labels from your standard office supply store).

I realize that the ability to print the labels "out of the box" will override these concerns for many, but this solution just seems so "1970's", in my opinion.

Once we get our test system up, I will be mocking up the labels in Crystal so that we can keep to the standard xx60 Avery labels (or something slightly smaller).

Just my $0.02,
rw

We use BarTender which is a software application which is under $100 dollars. I send txt files with the information to our users, and they assemble how they want the output and print to labels. It prints out with the bar codes.