Monday, April 4, 2011

QR Code and PLM

Yoann some time back wrote an exciting article on Integrating QR-code tag in User form in Aras Innovator (http://bit.ly/dGW2gx). This is a very interesting union! I am surprised to see that not many PLM vendors have QR code generation facilities. For starters QR Code has the capacity to encode 7,089 numeric characters, 4,296 Alphanumeric characters or 2,953 bytes of binary data (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code). 

QR Code was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave in 1994. As noted in the Denso-Wave’s case studies, QR code is being used in a variety of industries including Order/Product Scanning System for Automotive Parts, Process Control System for Electronic Circuit Boards, Logistics Control System for Food Products, Shipping Control System for Garment Products, etc. These codes contain varied data including product code, expiration date, manufacturing history, shipping destination, color, size, customer data, shipper data, production line, serial number etc.


The potential for QR Codes is limitless.  What’s most exciting is how they take what social media is doing well now, bringing people together with technology, and extending it to enhance the experience (http://bit.ly/i3hs2S). Some suggested uses for QR codes in the AEC (Architectural, Engineering and Construction) industry include using these codes to Link to Technical Information, Testimonials or case Studies and Customer Service (http://bit.ly/eKWU5e) Howcast in a recent blind pitch to Ikea, the company illustrated how video and QR codes could be used to create clear, overlaying instructions to guide consumers through the furniture assembly process. Such technology could be leveraged not only to improve consumer satisfaction, but could very well cut down on customer support costs for the company as well (http://on.mash.to/9FUyO5).







Another interesting article here http://bit.ly/hurw73 shows how QR Codes has been used to foil counterfeiting, for example the counterfeiting of postage stamps. Many countries of Europe as well as Canada and the United States have implemented this scheme, although details vary from one country to the next.



There has been some discussion on identification of drawing using embedded QR codes (http://bit.ly/cyGup4 and http://bit.ly/cyNVe4) but there hasn’t been anything spectacular. QR Code generation is easy with number of sites allowing you to generate simple QR code for free including Google. (Go to http://goo.gl/ and enter the URL of the site which you want your QR code to be generated. Once you have shortened URL, put it in the URL bar and add .qr to it. Click enter and the QR would automatically created). Hopefully PLM vendors will wake up to this reality and provide options for generating such code in their solutions.