Barcodes

Barcodes and retail packaging go hand in hand. How do barcodes work and why are they so important in retail merchandise packaging? Barcodes (no typo, it’s actually one word!) are really a generic name for a family of machine readable codes used to track an object. Although closely associated with retail packaging, barcodes are used in a myriad of applications by many industries, and used in such diverse applications from drivers licenses to plastic hospital ID wristbands. In fact, the QR code that’s popular now is a two-dimensional barcode created by Toyota to track their car parts. This code has since been adopted by many businesses; most notably by the mobile phone industry which lets users scan a QR code with their smartphone to easily and quickly display websites on their phone.