DC Velocity - January 2013

inbound

A line in the sand … and the rest is history

Most people know that the first commercial use of bar codes dates back to the mid-1960s. But few are aware that the bar-code concept dates back to the late 1940s, that it was inspired by Morse code, and that its inventor’s “eureka moment” occurred while he was hanging out on a Florida beach.

These and other little-known facts about the now-ubiquitous product identifier have been in the news following the death in early December of Norman Joseph Woodland, the mechanical engineer who first envisioned the bar code. He was 91.

In 1948, Woodland and Bernard Silver, a classmate at Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University), were trying to develop a way to encode product data for the grocery industry. When their original idea didn’t pan out, Woodland quit grad school to think about other approaches. While pondering the problem sitting on a beach in Miami, he decided that some sort of visual code would be the best way to represent product information. He had learned Morse code as a Boy Scout and surmised that a graphic version of the dots and dashes might work.

At that moment, Woodland recounted decades later, he drew lines in the sand with his fingers. Instead of dots and dashes, he thought, the width of the lines could convey information. Almost immediately afterward, he redrew the lines in a bull’s-eye pattern. Woodland and Silver patented a code based on that design in 1952, but it never gained traction and they eventually sold the patent for just $15,000.

Over the years, technological advances made bar coding feasible and more cost-effective. Woodland, meanwhile, went to work at IBM, and in the early 1970s, a coworker there developed the familiar rectangular bar code.

Woodland received the National Medal of Technology in 1992 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2011. ;

Truckers give Obama
a thumbs-down

If you have company affiliates or customers in India, they’ll soon have a chance to experience the same high-quality supply chain education you enjoy in the United States. From Feb. 22 to 23, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) will host its India 2013 conference in Mumbai.

The conference, titled “Creating Effective Supply Chains in a Global Economy,” will bring together supply chain executives from well-known global companies, including Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and Kraft, as well as representatives of influential Indian firms. The keynote address will be given by John Phillips, senior vice president of customer supply chain and logistics for PepsiCo Inc. Other sessions will look at supply chain efficiency and cost management, supply chain strategic planning, and challenges in retail logistics.

The cost to attend is just $180 for CSCMP members and $370 for nonmembers. More information about the program is available at http://cscmp.org/annual-conferences/India. ; CSCMP brings educational conference to India

Barack Obama may have won the 2012 presidential election, but he apparently did so with little help from the trucking industry. Ninety-three percent of the carrier executives surveyed by Transport Capital Partners (TCP) for its Fourth Quarter 2012 Business Expectations report indicated they were not happy with the election’s outcome. Only 1 percent of the larger carriers who participated in the survey gave Obama’s re-elec-tion a thumbs-up, while the 9 percent of smaller carriers who are primarily sole proprietors or LLCs did the same, the firm said.

The looming “fiscal cliff” was a source of uncertainty for the majority of respondents. Fifty-two percent said they were not making plans until they know how Congress will handle taxes and spending cuts. “Most carriers are in a ‘parked’ mode, and decisions are either deferred or changing until the ‘cliff’ is addressed,” said Richard Mikes, a TCP partner. “Uncertainty about the tax picture for 2013 is [pushing] some carriers to accelerate merger and acquisition activity before the year closes, and many deals are being pressured as buyers and sellers are uncertain about what 2013 holds for them,” Mikes and partner Steven Dutro said in a statement.

Chattanooga, Tenn.-based TCP provides advisory services related to transportation mergers and acquisitions, capital sourcing, operations, and long-term strategy. The firm has conducted the quarterly survey of carrier executives’ concerns and expectations since 2008. For more information, visit www.transportcap.com. ;