There are continuous developments in manufacturing, distribution, communications, transportation, healthcare and other sectors along with computer technology. These continuous developments continue to play a large part in great change.
It is important for collecting and processing information on timely basis for any business in this fast changing world. It is necessary that managers should act quickly to take effective and necessary changes in manufacturing or distribution. Otherwise, they must respond quickly to new customer needs or requirements.
Automation of the data collection function helps to speedup the data collection. It is more faster than manual methods. Manual method is costly and it is slow and there are chances of human errors, so that is why automated data collection process expanded widely all over the world. There are three phases in automated data collection process.
Print: First step is automatic identification and it is essential. It is accomplished by attaching a barcode to a part, document, package, personal identification badge or some other product. They can be tracked by using barcode.
Capture: When a part moves in or out of inventory, a work piece comes in or out of a given stage in the manufacturing process. In this case, the data collection phase can occur. Scanning barcode labels can capture these actions accurately. Information can be read by Barcode scanners more faster and accurately than humans can do. The automated error rate is one per 3 million characters.
Connect: when scanned data is gathered at a central point and changed into a appropriate form into data stream of a computer then computer system input occurs. The consequence is accurate data automatically which is captured as each event occurs. In this way it permits the management to take appropriate decisions based on solid and current information.
Automated data collection is essential to improve control and for providing more accurate and valuable information timely in management then it result in increased productivity and reduced cost.