Furniture maker opts for wireless LAN barcoding

To help with its flexible manufacturing philosophy, office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller has recently installed data collection technology specialist DataScan Systems’ bar code reader and wireless local area network (LAN) technology, CM2000, for its new production site. The company had been suffering from costly re-wiring issues each time it needed to re-arrange its machinery to maximise throughput. Every time the firm moved its bar code readers located on shrink-wrap machines it had to re-route cabling and re-commission the bar code readers. Whilst machines were often moved on weekends to avoid production losses, the bar code readers could not be tested again until production started on the Monday morning. At Herman’s new site, bar codes are read and received on the CM2000 unit and the data is encoded and transmitted using an industry standard 802.11b wireless LAN. Strategically placed access points around the installation sit on an existing LAN, occupying an IP address. The access point receives the scanned bar code data which is interpreted by PC-based program and passes the data to the host application.