Revised 2D barcode offers potential in beverage, distribution, ecommerce markets

The long-awaited July 2019 revision to DotCode—the barcode symbology adopted for track-and-trace by key manufacturers in the tobacco industry because of its ability to be applied at speeds of more than 1,000 codes per minute—makes one expert wonder if beverage and other high-speed packaging and distribution operations can be far behind in implementing the symbology. DotCode symbology, revision 4.0—recently ratified by AIM Inc., a trusted global authority on automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) technologies and original publisher of many of the world’s dominant barcode specifications—has been adopted by global standards organization GS1 in a rare mid-year GS1 General Specifications update.