The need for property accountability for our US Department of Defense is extraordinary. The thinking is simple: how can you budget and maintain equipment when you don’t know what you’ve got in the first place? Mark an item, scan the item, and identify the location or custodian. As we progress through 2012 we’ll see more [...]
Property accountability, a phrase that the Department of Defense uses frequently, is tough to understand. I like to use a more simple reference: “What do I have and where is it?” IUID and barcode technology do a tremendous job of answering those questions, whether in a unit, a company or an enterprise. By way of analogy, I [...]
We all wait in anticipation of “the rule.” John Crowley, Senior Advisor for Patient Safety, Center for Devices and Radiological Health for the FDA, joked at the beginning of the UDI conference in November that we’re only two weeks away from releasing the rule and have been for almost six months now. That became the running joke [...]
Over the past two years veterans have played a key role in A2B’s success. All of us at A2B Tracking Solutions send a sincere thank you those veterans along with the 1.5 million men and women who are actively serving our country in every corner of the globe. Your sacrifice, like our gratitude, is beyond [...]
If you have ever doubted that accounting for personal property and equipment within the military is a hot topic, then take some time to watch this video from the House Armed Service Committee. http://armedservices.house.gov/index.cfm/2011/9/organizational-challenges-in-achieving-sound-financial-management-and-audit-readiness The need for Item Unique Identification or IUID has never been greater. Achieving a clean audit is critical to our country’s [...]
Since the inception of IUID policy back in 2003, the debate over encoding syntax with UID has raged on. Early in the adoption, what I’ll call the “engineering mindset” won the debate, which prompted many to choose construct 2 as their format of choice. Now that almost 8 years have passed, the practicality and direct [...]
Last week I talked about spreadsheets and how woefully inadequate they are for property management. I’ve actually come across large organizations that are managed by spreadsheet, and I have to say it’s like stepping back in time. The 1983 movie title “Risky Business” comes to mind. The first problem such companies face is the challenge [...]
Fads come and go. Those that have “staying power” become trends that inevitably provide benefit to organizations or society as a whole. Bar code, now 50 years old and counting, is well beyond a fad. The benefit of bar code has often been to enable “visibility” of items or people. These important things are tracked [...]
Yesterday at A2B headquarters we celebrated the 50th bar code anniversary with Rhode Island Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and RI Congressman Cicilline and Governor Chafee. The Congressman presented our very own A2B Tracking Chairman, David Collins, with a congressional citation congratulating him for being the “father of the bar code industry.” ABC 6's [...]
Imagine the world before bar code. A2B will soon host an Open House to celebrate the 50th anniversary of bar code scanning. That milestone makes me reflect on the changes that bar code has brought. In 1961, when the first test scan occurred on a Boston & Maine railcar, computers were being used to perform [...]
