Barcode Serial Number Labels

Can Barcode Serial Number Labels help your business?

A lot of organizations have the need to be able to identify assets or other items. A simple way to do this is often by using barcode serial number labels.

By printing the serial number in barcode form on the label as well as human readable text, it is possible to capture the serial numbers quickly and accurately when needed.

What are some of the ways in which barcode labels can help?

Asset Tracking

If you have fixed assets that need to be quickly located, a serial number barcode on each item is the starting point to a robust and accurate system.

There are many ways to handle the asset data, from using a simple spreadsheet all the way to using the asset control modules in ERP software. All rely on the fact that each asset is identified with a unique serial number.

Inventory and Production Tracking

Talking to people in many companies, if often seems that they have a pretty good idea of the status of their fixed assets, but often inventory and, in particular,  work in process is a little more vague.

Again, the use of serialized labels on items used in production as well as barcode location labels is the starting point to get a robust system in place.

In the warehouse, unique barcode labels for shelves and locations are needed to ensure that items are put away in the correct places and that they can be easily found again when needed for use in production or to be shipped.

Compliance

One of the reason for using serial number labels is to comply with requests from customers.

If you happen to be in the defense supply chain, you’ll need to be able to produce unique serialized labels that meet the demands of MIL-STD-129 and 130. You’re a food company? I’m sure you are already familiar with the standard of GS1 that enable traceability and are built around unique serial labels.

Medical device company? You’ll be wanted to ensure that your serial labels are compliant to GS1 or to HIBBC, the two standard bodies that are most likely to be needed for the FDA’s Unique Device Identification program.

Warranty and Repair Control

Need to keep track of products that are returned to you for warranty and other repair work? Again, having unique serial labels on the parts makes it simple to scan the barcode to look up the item in the database, giving access to the warranty status and repair history.

Where to get the Labels?

There are basically two ways to acquire custom serial number labels for your organization.

Buy blank labels and print them in-house – we can get you set up with everything you need.

Provide the details of what you need to print to Winco ID and we’ll take care of the rest. We have printers in 203, 300, 400 and 600 DPI resolutions and with our label manufacturing capability can handle just about every application imaginable.

Either option is a viable way to get started.

Using unique barcode labels on assets can give them a “digital voice”. Check out my recent presentation on this from BarCodes and Baseball and read about our Label Printing Service here!