Supply and logistics software system based on barcoding technology

Abstract

The paper discusses the development of the supply and logistics software system with data processing advanced means based on barcoding technology. Even though barcoding technology is well-known and widely used technology to automated data input into a computer system, nowadays there is no sole approach to a computer system development based on barcoding in the area of supply and logistics. Thus, the authors focus their research on developing a basic software system architecture, which can simplify the process of software development, as well as ways of its adaptation for solving logistic problems that require access to data represented in a form of a barcode. To represent information of an accounting object, a two-layer barcode approach is proposed in the paper. The main idea of two-layer barcoding is to encode two independent data sequences to the same barcode. The bottom layer contains autonomous textual data about an accounting object. Usually, it is a relatively short description in a given format. The top layer stores numeric data, which is the object ID in the remote database. It is assumed in the paper that three groups of users can operate the logistics computer system: operator, forwarder, and manager. Each of these groups has its own access permissions. An operator can only input data into the system. A forwarder is allowed to access bottom-layer data; it gives a possibility to get basic information about an object without accessing the Internet that might be unstable on the journey and in small villages. A manager can access the full information about the object through a top layer. A basic system architecture bases on functional and non-functional requirements and consists of the modules for the object processing, barcode symbol creating, and restoring initial data. This architecture contains a universal set of components that allows to adapt it to any needs of logistics companies, which simplifies the logistics software process. In order to implement developed architecture, a new design pattern “Converter” has been proposed.