German-based trans-o-flex has launched a new generation of address labels integrating the QRcode to make shipping easier, faster and safer with all data of a standard shipment to be collected
electronically and processed automatically without manual intervention.The QR code, already known with millions of mobile phone users, was developed for fast and safescanning with the capacity to store considerably more information than the barcode labels usedpreviously.
Oliver Rupps, spokesman of the trans-o-flex Logistics Group’s Management Board, said: “All datanecessary for a standard shipment with trans-o-flex can be digitalised in the QR code. Thus,standard shipment customers no longer have to transmit shipment data in advance. Instead, weregister every shipment fully electronically and automatically.”
Only specific additional services for relatively large data volumes require the datatransmission as usual. This applies, for example, to hazardous shipments, in cases wheretrans-o-flex takes over the advance notification of dispatch or prints the delivery note, or alsoto deliveries to countries outside the EU, due to the customs information.
trans-o-flex introduced modern data collection and transmission software already some time agoand gets the complete shipment data transmitted electronically in more than 92% of all cases.However, it often occurs in practice that the expected data differs from the actual data at thepoint of receipt. This can happen when, for example, customers have already transmitted theshipment data to trans-o-flex and later also hand the urgent orders over for collection to thetrans-o-flex driver. In this case, these parcels arrive without any data and it might be necessaryto generate a router label for the internal control or the delivery-relevant data have to bemanually collected afterwards so that an electronically-based delivery is possible.
In order to use the QR code, customers need a software update. Once it is completed, the newaddress labels can be handled with the code as easily as before just by printing the label andsticking it on the parcel. Only when customers use their own shipping systems, it is necessary thatthe printing of the QR codes onto the label is adjusted by the customers themselves. Therefore,trans-o-flex has developed the so-called 2D business label, which, in addition to the QR code, alsocontains the conventional barcode. The new label can be used immediately.
By mid-2013, customers are expected to profit from all these benefits, e.g. no longer having totransmit the data prior to the shipment. By then, trans-o-flex will have completed all necessarymodifications in its scanning processes and technical systems for the automatic processing of theQR code.
