If you have a business that deals with warehousing inventory, shipping, storing, or managing distribution centers, then implementing inventory management is undoubtedly one of your primary goals.
In today’s hypercompetitive and COVID-repressed marketplace, the importance of an accurate warehouse inventory becomes even more important for businesses looking to gain traction or leap ahead of competitors.
Good warehouse management depends upon accurate inventory records that allow you to plan and strategize so you can develop the kind of relationships with clients and suppliers that add to profitability.
On-target record keeping allows you to control expenses, reduce the cost of storing unnecessary items, and even cut down on training time and labor while amplifying the productivity of your work staff.
Carrying excess inventory can negatively impact your available capital — and knowing exactly what you are storing is critical in gaining tax benefits from deducting your inventory costs, such as a reduction of your gross receipts.
Fortunately, taking control of your business’ inventory is simple using current technologies that employ barcoding and RFID labeling to keep close track of warehoused items. Thermal printers and specialized RFID and barcode printers offer an easy, cost-effective way for your business to get — and stay — on track with inventory management.
How Thermal Printers Can Help with Implementing Inventory Management
Thermal printing can be used to print both barcodes and RFID signatures, along with benefits like fast output and a process that is not reliant on ink to print.
With direct thermal printing, an image is produced using selective heat on thermochromic paper. Thermal transfer printing, commonly used in RFID code printing, relies on a heat-sensitive ribbon instead of paper, but the process is the same.
Using thermal printers for warehouse management is a smart way to reap the significant benefits of inventory control and management since they offer clear, crisp prints that are easily read by people or scanners.
1. Barcoding and Barcode Printers
Barcoding is probably already a part of your daily experience. From retail hang tags to the food you purchase in a supermarket, barcodes are used to track items, make pricing and checkout easier, and improve inventory efficiency.
Accuracy is one of the best reasons to implement barcoding in your business. An excellent data entry operator still makes an error in every 300 keystrokes, but the best barcode technology offers one error in every 10.5 million scans.
Barcode printers use thermal printing to produce convenient, easy-to-scan codes that can help you keep perfect track of inventory, gauge employee performance, and avoid product outages.
2. RFID Codes and RFID Printers
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an advanced technology that can be faster to use than barcoding. RFID tags typically broadcast a signal, allowing your warehouse management system to keep track of them automatically.
RFID tags can hold more data than a barcode — up to 100 times more — and offer faster scanning than barcodes, increasing efficiency and reducing the number of staff needed. Since staff salaries represent one of the main warehousing costs, RFID scanning can help businesses quickly realize tangible benefits.
RFID tags can also increase inventory security by using alarms that activate if items leave a warehouse before they are supposed to.
RFID printers operate similarly to barcode printers, using the thermal transfer to encode and print labels for item tracking applications.
Blue Technologies Has the Printers You Need for Proper Warehouse Management
At Blue Technologies, we take pride in having the latest, most cutting-edge technologies in-house and available to our clients to help them do business better and more profitably.
To this end, we have a wide variety of thermal printing options that can help you take your warehouse management, inventory tracking, item tracing, and even employee performance to the next level, making you more competitive in today’s volatile market.
Our range of barcode printers and RFID printers offer the right features to keep your critical operations running at an optimal level. Gain deep visibility, enterprise insights, and outstanding tracking abilities that contribute to more efficient business processes and a healthier bottom line by using our rugged, reliable thermal printers.
Take advantage of today’s technologies to get your warehouse operations under control. Contact a Blue Technologies consultant today and get expert help choosing a thermal printing solution that meets your business needs, goals, and budget.