Tom Wood is the senior product market manager for Epicor’s automotive division. He spoke to Aftermarket Business World about the use of automatic identification technology in the aftermarket.
Are there still companies in the aftermarket who have resisted deploying barcoding technology?
But there are so many reasons for companies to invest in barcoding. From a jobber/distributor standpoint, one way to get a high return on investment is to put barcoding in the receiving area. In the old days, you used to get a purchase order and the warehouse would send 10 or 15 invoices based on where it should be picked out of the warehouse. You’d get all this material dumped on the floor, and people were trying to put it away. With barcoding you just receive it, scan it and put it on the shelf accurately.
We’ve found that jobbers are able to put merchandise up five times faster with barcoding than without it, if they are checking everything in. It saves a lot of time and you’re not flipping through paper forms.
The second area to think about is cycle counting. You can use barcode scanning to generate those counts in a controlled way over a period of a year. You don’t have to count everything and do a physical inventory. It’s much more efficient than a wall-to-wall count.
Are there still any issues with supplier compliance in terms of barcode readability and database information?
The technology is getting better. You will get those problems with rebuilt products or returns that don’t have barcodes on them. They get torn up. But there are belt-worn, hip printers now that you can use to print a label and put on that merchandise. You can create a more accurate flow through the return cycle process.
The industry is in really good shape now with manufacturer barcoding. We have tremendous databases that provide barcodes for most of the industry. Companies understand the importance of it, especially the retailers. The point of sale accuracy is tremendous.
Are your customers able to leverage barcoding in conjunction with dispatch and delivery operations?
At every touch during the delivery process, you can scan a barcode and know when an invoice is printed and a part is put in the delivery area. When the driver picks up the ticket, they scan their badge and vehicle, and then you know the part is in transit. You scan the ticket at delivery, the customer signs the ticket, and it can be tracked. You know the whole delivery cycle. There is a lot of data that can be gathered during delivery because of the barcoding on the ticket.
