Print trends
June 1st 2006

Jamie Anne O'Donnell, media products business development manager EMEA for Intermec Inc., looks at the latest developments in the printing & labelling market

Often overlooked as the less glamorous sibling to headline grabbing data capture tools on the market, printing and labelling technologies are nevertheless important components in the automated identification and data capture (AIDC) technology for manufacturing, warehousing and transport and logistics environments.

Trends in the printing and labelling market give an indication of where the technology is headed. In the past, companies that wanted to purchase value-priced printers often had to sacrifice ruggedness and performance to pay a lower cost. Printing and labelling manufacturers and suppliers are evolving their product offerings today to meet the markets demands for quicker, more efficient and increasingly reliable printing and labelling technologies.

More barcodes

Although increasing use of AIDC technology means we are cutting down on paper use in the traditional sense as inventory and other supply chain applications go paperless, ironically this means that we will be printing more barcodes. Printing and labelling demand is as high as ever and likely to continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

As a result, the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of printers is being increasingly scrutinised. Additionally, developments within the industry such as improved paper quality used for labelling mean that printing and labelling technologies remain highly relevant across a variety of supply chain environments.

Today's users of printing and labelling technologies are no longer satisfied with robust and reliable products. Now they demand reliability coupled with speed of use. Printing and labelling technology is evolving to the demands of the changing marketplace. Labels today need to be able to withstand abrasions and a variety of weather conditions in the transition of products through the supply chain. In the everwidening global market one labelled or tagged product may need to be read in a sub zero temperature Nordic country one day and the extreme heat of the Middle East the next. Different materials will endure different temperatures. A Polyester Tag, for example, will be able to resist a temperature range of -40º to 150°C, and has a very good tear resistance which means it can be used in harsh conditions and even left outside.

Suppliers need to have complete confidence that labels will remain intact through transportation and in warehouse environments in order to avoid any confusion or disruption in the supply chain process. One disruptive link could have a ripple effect across connecting industries on the other side of the world and today's supply chain is only as good as the data it depends on.

Reliability and speed of use

In recognition of the increasing customer demands for printing and labelling technology, one of Intermec's latest innovations is a printer designed specifically to address both the questions of reliability and the speed of use. The EasyCoder PD41 barcode printer is housed in a rugged metal case for extra protection and reliability. It can rapidly produce variable-data labels continuously at 150 mm/s (6 ips), outperforming any other printer in its class. Its open and accessible design makes media loading quick and easy and the print head can easily be replaced without using any tools, dramatically reducing field downtime and significantly increasing printing efficiency. Depending on use, print head's may need replacing once a year and more often in high volume applications. A single site is likely to have multiple printers, each requiring replacement print heads at different times.

Designed to meet the needs of the global marketplace, the PD41 is a universal printer, with support for Unicode and the ability to print multiple languages and a wide variety of fonts, including non-Latin. It also supports all major printer command languages for seamless integration into any enterprise.

The emergence of RFID will also have bearings on where the printing and labelling technologies are headed in the future. RFID has now been added to the latest label products.

The EasyCoder PM4i printer from Intermec is an extremely versatile barcode label printer that is exceptionally fast in throughput and printing. It is reliable and delivers very high print quality and can also be specified to include an RFID capability.

The PM4i RFID enabled printer is one of the first to support the current RFID industry Gen2 standard.

The PM4i is a multi-function printer which allows companies to create RFID smart labels and can eliminate the need for a PC, as well as operate additional hardware such as scanners, other printers and conveyors, while retaining the capacity to change with the application for added functionality.

So how will RFID and other emerging technologies impact on the traditional printing and labelling market over the coming years? As long as printing and labelling manufacturers continue to evolve their product range and meet the changing needs of their customers through offering more efficient and increasingly reliable printing and labelling solutions, for all the advances in RFID it is clear that printing and labelling technology, much like barcode technology itself, is here to stay. Far from outweighing it, barcode technology will continue to grow alongside RFID and the two will complement each other.

More articles from Intermec Technologies UK Ltd: