100-599: The Postal Alpha Numeric Encoding Technique (PLANET) barcode was used by the United States Postal Service to identify and track pieces of mail during delivery – the Post Office's "CONFIRM" services. It was fully superseded by Intelligent Mail Barcode by January 28, 2013. A PLANET barcode appears either 12 or 14 digits long. The barcode: Like POSTNET , PLANET encodes the data in half- and full-height bars. Also like POSTNET, PLANET always starts and ends with
200-484: A 1976 article. Sims Supermarkets were the first location in Australia to use barcodes, starting in 1979. A barcode system is a network of hardware and software, consisting primarily of mobile computers , printers , handheld scanners , infrastructure, and supporting software. Barcode systems are used to automate data collection where hand recording is neither timely nor cost effective. Despite often being provided by
300-424: A 500-watt incandescent light bulb shining through the paper onto an RCA935 photomultiplier tube (from a movie projector) on the far side. He later decided that the system would work better if it were printed as a circle instead of a line, allowing it to be scanned in any direction. On 20 October 1949 Woodland and Silver filed a patent application for "Classifying Apparatus and Method", in which they described both
400-437: A few different forms. Matrix codes can also be read by a digital camera connected to a microcomputer running software that takes a photographic image of the barcode and analyzes the image to deconstruct and decode the code. A mobile device with a built-in camera, such as a smartphone , can function as the latter type of barcode reader using specialized application software and is suitable for both 1D and 2D codes. The barcode
500-486: A formal bid yet to be tabled, the Takeover Panel issued a bid deadline of 13 April. On 4 April, KKR left the consortium to focus on its bid for Alliance Boots . On 5 April, the consortium submitted an "indicative offer" of 562p a share to the company's board. After discussions between Sir Philip Hampton and the two largest Sainsbury family shareholders Lord Sainsbury of Turville and Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover
600-544: A full bar (often called a guard rail), and each individual digit is represented by a set of five bars using a two-out-of-five code . However, in POSTNET, the two bars are full bars; in PLANET, the two-of-five are the short bars. As with POSTNET, the check digit is calculated by summing the other characters and calculating the single digit which, when added to the sum, makes the total divisible by 10. This postal system–related article
700-409: A grid pattern. 2D symbologies also come in circular and other patterns and may employ steganography , hiding modules within an image (for example, DataGlyphs ). Linear symbologies are optimized for laser scanners, which sweep a light beam across the barcode in a straight line, reading a slice of the barcode light-dark patterns. Scanning at an angle makes the modules appear wider, but does not change
800-449: A grocer's branch at 12 Kingsland High Street, Dalston . Every shop offered home delivery, as there were fewer cars in those days. Sites were carefully chosen, with a central position in a parade selected in preference to a corner shop. This allowed a larger display of products, which could be kept cooler in summer, which was important as there was no refrigeration. By the time John James Sainsbury died in 1928, there were over 128 shops. He
900-503: A grocery store. This speeds up processing at check-outs and helps track items and also reduces instances of shoplifting involving price tag swapping, although shoplifters can now print their own barcodes. Barcodes that encode a book's ISBN are also widely pre-printed on books, journals and other printed materials. In addition, retail chain membership cards use barcodes to identify customers, allowing for customized marketing and greater understanding of individual consumer shopping patterns. At
1000-434: A laser, as there is typically no sweep pattern that can encompass the entire symbol. They must be scanned by an image-based scanner employing a CCD or other digital camera sensor technology. The earliest, and still the cheapest, barcode scanners are built from a fixed light and a single photosensor that is manually moved across the barcode. Barcode scanners can be classified into three categories based on their connection to
1100-578: A linear code, like the one being developed by Woodland at IBM, was printed in the direction of the stripes, so extra ink would simply make the code "taller" while remaining readable. So on 3 April 1973 the IBM UPC was selected as the NAFC standard. IBM had designed five versions of UPC symbology for future industry requirements: UPC A, B, C, D, and E. NCR installed a testbed system at Marsh's Supermarket in Troy, Ohio , near
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#17328589560731200-619: A minor heart attack. In the Second World War , many of the men who worked for Sainsbury's were called to perform National Service and were replaced by women. The war was a difficult time for Sainsbury's, as most of its shops were trading in the London area and were bombed or damaged. Turnover fell to half the prewar level. Food was rationed, and one particular shop in East Grinstead was so badly damaged on Friday 9 July 1943 that it had to move to
1300-635: A minority stake in another supermarket group, Giant Food, based in Washington, DC , although this shareholding was subsequently sold when Ahold of the Netherlands made a full bid for the company. An arrangement in late 1995 with Supermarket Direct made Sainsbury's the first major grocery retailer in the UK to offer a home delivery service. In May 1996, the company reported its first fall in profits for 22 years. David Sainsbury announced management changes, involving
1400-508: A mirror as well, making it capable of locating a barcode up to a meter (3 feet) in front of the scanner. This made the entire process much simpler and more reliable, and typically enabled these devices to deal with damaged labels, as well, by recognizing and reading the intact portions. Computer Identics Corporation installed one of its first two scanning systems in the spring of 1969 at a General Motors (Buick) factory in Flint, Michigan. The system
1500-522: A monthly pass. Then the US Post Office requested a system to track trucks entering and leaving their facilities. These applications required special retroreflector labels. Finally, Kal Kan asked the Sylvania team for a simpler (and cheaper) version which they could put on cases of pet food for inventory control. In 1967, with the railway system maturing, Collins went to management looking for funding for
1600-530: A new facility in Research Triangle Park to lead development. In July 1972 RCA began an 18-month test in a Kroger store in Cincinnati. Barcodes were printed on small pieces of adhesive paper, and attached by hand by store employees when they were adding price tags. The code proved to have a serious problem; the printers would sometimes smear ink, rendering the code unreadable in most orientations. However,
1700-502: A project to develop a black-and-white version of the code for other industries. They declined, saying that the railway project was large enough, and they saw no need to branch out so quickly. Collins then quit Sylvania and formed the Computer Identics Corporation . As its first innovations, Computer Identics moved from using incandescent light bulbs in its systems, replacing them with helium–neon lasers , and incorporated
1800-573: A result of increased sales. Sainsbury's sold its subsidiary in America, Shaw's, to Albertsons in March 2004. Also in 2004 Sainsbury's expanded its share of the convenience shop market through acquisitions. After the launch of King's recovery programme, the company reported nineteen consecutive quarters of sales growth, most recently in October 2009. Early sales increases were credited to solving problems with
1900-487: A sign outside his first shop was: "Quality perfect, prices lower". Shops started to look similar, so a high cast-iron 'J. SAINSBURY' sign featured on every London shop so that it could be recognised from a distance, and round-the-back deliveries started to add extra convenience and not upset rivals due to Sainsbury's popularity. In 1922, J Sainsbury was incorporated as the private company 'J. Sainsbury Limited'. Groceries were introduced in 1903, when John James purchased
2000-448: A task for which they have become almost universal. The Uniform Grocery Product Code Council had chosen, in 1973, the barcode design developed by George Laurer . Laurer's barcode, with vertical bars, printed better than the circular barcode developed by Woodland and Silver. Their use has spread to many other tasks that are generically referred to as automatic identification and data capture (AIDC). The first successful system using barcodes
2100-442: A web page. A mobile device with a built-in camera might be used to read the pattern and browse the linked website, which can help a shopper find the best price for an item in the vicinity. Since 2005, airlines use an IATA-standard 2D barcode on boarding passes ( Bar Coded Boarding Pass (BCBP) ), and since 2008 2D barcodes sent to mobile phones enable electronic boarding passes. Some applications for barcodes have fallen out of use. In
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#17328589560732200-712: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form . Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or one-dimensional (1D), can be scanned by special optical scanners , called barcode readers , of which there are several types. Later, two-dimensional (2D) variants were developed, using rectangles, dots, hexagons and other patterns, called 2D barcodes or matrix codes , although they do not use bars as such. Both can be read using purpose-built 2D optical scanners, which exist in
2300-425: Is common for producers and users of bar codes to have a quality management system which includes verification and validation of bar codes. Barcode verification examines scanability and the quality of the barcode in comparison to industry standards and specifications. Barcode verifiers are primarily used by businesses that print and use barcodes. Any trading partner in the supply chain can test barcode quality. It
2400-450: Is encoded using black bars of varying width. The second character is then encoded by varying the width of the white spaces between these bars. Thus, characters are encoded in pairs over the same section of the barcode. Interleaved 2 of 5 is an example of this. Stacked symbologies repeat a given linear symbology vertically. The most common among the many 2D symbologies are matrix codes, which feature square or dot-shaped modules arranged on
2500-462: Is important to verify a barcode to ensure that any reader in the supply chain can successfully interpret a barcode with a low error rate. Retailers levy large penalties for non-compliant barcodes. These chargebacks can reduce a manufacturer's revenue by 2% to 10%. A barcode verifier works the way a reader does, but instead of simply decoding a barcode, a verifier performs a series of tests. For linear barcodes these tests are: 2D matrix symbols look at
2600-756: Is the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar , the Qatar Investment Authority , which holds around 15% of the company. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index . Sainsbury's was established as a partnership in 1869, when John James Sainsbury and his wife Mary Ann opened a shop at 173 Drury Lane in Covent Garden, London. Sainsbury started as a retailer of fresh foods and later expanded into packaged groceries such as tea and sugar. His trading philosophy, as stated on
2700-454: The Association of American Railroads (AAR) selected it as a standard, automatic car identification , across the entire North American fleet. The installations began on 10 October 1967. However, the economic downturn and rash of bankruptcies in the industry in the early 1970s greatly slowed the rollout, and it was not until 1974 that 95% of the fleet was labeled. To add to its woes, the system
2800-972: The Meadowhall Shopping Centre , Sheffield (originally as a SavaCentre) in 1990, and the Merry Hill Shopping Centre at Brierley Hill in the West Midlands , which opened in September 1989. Sainsbury's expanded into Scotland in 1992 with a shop in Darnley (the SavaCentre at Cameron Toll in Edinburgh had opened in 1984). In June 1995, Sainsbury's announced its intention to move into the Northern Ireland market, until that point dominated by local companies. Between December 1996 and December 1998,
2900-447: The hypermarket sector, Sainsbury's formed a joint venture, known as SavaCentre , with British Home Stores . The first SavaCentre shop was opened in Washington, Tyne and Wear , in 1977; nearly half the space, amounting to some 35,000 sq ft (3,300 m ), was devoted to textiles, electrical goods and hardware. As the hypermarket format became more mainstream, with rivals such as Asda and Tesco launching ever larger shops, it
3000-461: The post-modernism movement. The mapping between messages and barcodes is called a symbology . The specification of a symbology includes the encoding of the message into bars and spaces, any required start and stop markers, the size of the quiet zone required to be before and after the barcode, and the computation of a checksum . Linear symbologies can be classified mainly by two properties: Some symbologies use interleaving. The first character
3100-454: The 1970s and 1980s, software source code was occasionally encoded in a barcode and printed on paper ( Cauzin Softstrip and Paperbyte are barcode symbologies specifically designed for this application), and the 1991 Barcode Battler computer game system used any standard barcode to generate combat statistics. Artists have used barcodes in art, such as Scott Blake 's Barcode Jesus, as part of
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3200-551: The 2000s due to the growth in smartphone ownership. Other systems have made inroads in the AIDC market, but the simplicity, universality and low cost of barcodes has limited the role of these other systems, particularly before technologies such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) became available after 2023. In 1948, Bernard Silver , a graduate student at Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US overheard
3300-502: The App World application can natively scan barcodes and load any recognized Web URLs on the device's Web browser. Windows Phone 7.5 is able to scan barcodes through the Bing search app. However, these devices are not designed specifically for the capturing of barcodes. As a result, they do not decode nearly as quickly or accurately as a dedicated barcode scanner or portable data terminal . It
3400-644: The Homebase chain in December 2000, in a twofold deal worth £ 969 million. Sales of the stores to Schroder Ventures generated £750 million and sale of 28 development sites, which had been earmarked for future Homebase shops, were sold for £219 million to rival B&Q 's parent company, Kingfisher plc . During the 1980s, the company invested in new technology: the proportion of sales passing through EPOS scanning checkouts rose from 1% to 90%. In November 1983, Sainsbury's purchased 21% of Shaw's Supermarkets ,
3500-686: The Nectar app. The Nectar scheme replaced the Sainsbury's Reward Card; accrued points were transferred over. In January 2003, Wm Morrison Supermarkets (trading as Morrisons) made an offer for the Safeway group, prompting a bidding war between the major supermarkets. The Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt , referred the various bids to the Competition Commission , which reported its findings on 26 September. The Commission found that all bids, with
3600-443: The Sainsbury's board would even consider opening its books for due diligence for anything less than 600p per share. Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, with just under 3%, was more extreme than his cousin, and refused to sell at any price. He believed any offer at that stage of Sainsbury's recovery was likely to undervalue the business, and with private equity seeking high returns on their investments, saw no reason to sell, given that
3700-439: The Sainsbury's group boasted a twelve-year record of dividend increases, of 20% or more and earnings per share had risen by as much for nearly as long. Also in 1991, the company raised £489 million, in new equity to fund the expansion of supershops. With the advent of out of town shopping complexes during the 1980s, Sainsbury's was one of the many big retail names to open new shops in such complexes – notably with its shop at
3800-575: The United Kingdom, instead assuming responsibility for the rest of the group. David Bremner became head of the supermarkets in the United Kingdom. This was "derided" by the city and described as a "fudge". On 14 January 2000 Sainsbury's reversed this decision by announcing the replacement of Adriano by Sir Peter Davis effective from March. Davis was CEO between 2000 and 2004, with his appointment well received by investors and analysts. In his first two years, he exceeded profit targets, although by 2004
3900-549: The application program. On PCs running Windows the human interface device emulates the data merging action of a hardware "keyboard wedge", and the scanner automatically behaves like an additional keyboard. Most modern smartphones are able to decode barcode using their built-in camera. Google's mobile Android operating system can use their own Google Lens application to scan QR codes, or third-party apps like Barcode Scanner to read both one-dimensional barcodes and QR codes. Google's Pixel devices can natively read QR codes inside
4000-455: The appointment of two chief executives, one in charge of supermarkets within the United Kingdom (Dino Adriano) and the other responsible for Homebase, and the United States (David Bremner). Finally, in 1998, David Sainsbury himself resigned from the company to pursue a career in politics. He was succeeded as non executive chairman by George Bull, who had been chairman of Diageo , and Adriano
4100-409: The approach. In cooperation with consulting firm, McKinsey & Co. , they developed a standardized 11-digit code for identifying products. The committee then sent out a contract tender to develop a barcode system to print and read the code. The request went to Singer , National Cash Register (NCR), Litton Industries , RCA, Pitney-Bowes , IBM and many others. A wide variety of barcode approaches
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4200-548: The availability problems, Justin King said "Lawrence hadn't seen anything that he hadn't seen before. He just hadn't seen them all in the same place at the same time". In 2006, Christensen commented on the four automated depots introduced by Davis, saying "not a single day went by without one, if not all of them, breaking down... The systems were flawed. They have to stop for four hours every day for maintenance. But because they were constantly breaking down you would be playing catch up. It
4300-446: The barcode gives the absolute coarse position. An "address carpet", used in digital paper , such as Howell's binary pattern and the Anoto dot pattern, is a 2D barcode designed so that a reader, even though only a tiny portion of the complete carpet is in the field of view of the reader, can find its absolute X, Y position and rotation in the carpet. Matrix codes can embed a hyperlink to
4400-410: The best known brand of handheld scanners and mobile computers being produced by Symbol , a division of Motorola . Some ERP, MRP, and other inventory management software have built in support for barcode reading. Alternatively, custom interfaces can be created using a language such as C++ , C# , Java , Visual Basic.NET , and many others. In addition, software development kits are produced to aid
4500-458: The colored stripes encoding information such as ownership, type of equipment, and identification number. The plates were read by a trackside scanner located, for instance, at the entrance to a classification yard, while the car was moving past. The project was abandoned after about ten years because the system proved unreliable after long-term use. Barcodes became commercially successful when they were used to automate supermarket checkout systems,
4600-471: The company and where the company could improve. This reaffirmed the commentary of retail analysts: the group was not ensuring that shelves were fully stocked, due to the failure of the IT systems introduced by Peter Davis . On 19 October 2004, King unveiled the results of the business review and his plans to revive the company's fortunes, in a three-year recovery plan entitled 'Making Sainsbury's Great Again'. This
4700-588: The company introduced another informal font in 2005, which is used in a wide range of advertising and literature. In 1999, Sainsbury's acquired an 80.1% share of Egyptian Distribution Group SAE, a retailer in Egypt with one hundred shops and 2,000 employees. However, poor profitability led to the sale of this share in April 2001. On 8 October 1999, the CEO Dino Adriano lost control of the core supermarket business within
4800-429: The company opened seven shops. Two others at Sprucefield , Lisburn, and Holywood Exchange , Belfast would not open until 2003, due to protracted legal challenges. While Sainsbury's outlets in Northern Ireland were all new developments, Tesco (apart from one Tesco Metro) instead purchased existing chains from Associated British Foods (see Tesco Ireland ). In 1992, the long time CEO John Davan Sainsbury retired, and
4900-440: The company was soon forced to backtrack, introducing its own Reward Card eighteen months later. For much of the 20th century, Sainsbury's had been the market leader in the supermarket sector in the United Kingdom, but in 1995, it lost this position to Tesco. Some new ventures were successful, notably the launch of a retail bank, Sainsbury's Bank , in partnership with Bank of Scotland . In addition to Shaw's, Sainsbury's bought
5000-425: The company went public on 12 July 1973, as J Sainsbury plc, the company was wholly owned by the Sainsbury family. It was at the time the largest ever flotation on the London Stock Exchange ; the company rewarded the smaller bids for shares in order to create as many shareholders as possible. A million shares were set aside for staff, which led to many staff members buying shares that shot up in value. Within one minute
5100-454: The company's distribution system. Later sales improvements were put down to price cuts and the company's focus on fresh and healthy food. On 2 February 2007, after months of speculation about a private equity bid, CVC Capital Partners , Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and Blackstone Group announced that they were considering a bid for Sainsbury's. The consortium grew to include Goldman Sachs and Texas Pacific Group . On 6 March 2007, with
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#17328589560735200-532: The computer. The older type is the RS-232 barcode scanner. This type requires special programming for transferring the input data to the application program. Keyboard interface scanners connect to a computer using a PS/2 or AT keyboard –compatible adaptor cable (a " keyboard wedge "). The barcode's data is sent to the computer as if it had been typed on the keyboard. Like the keyboard interface scanner, USB scanners do not need custom code for transferring input data to
5300-454: The construction of four fully automated depots, which at £100 million each cost four times more than standard depots. In 2001, Sainsbury's moved into its current headquarters at Holborn, London. Sainsbury's previously occupied Stamford House and twelve other buildings around Southwark . The accounting department remained separate at Streatham . The building was designed by architectural firm Foster and Partners , and had been developed on
5400-495: The current management, led by Justin King, could deliver the extra profit generated for the benefit of existing investors. He claimed the bid 'brought nothing to the business', and that high levels of debt would significantly weaken the company and its competitive position in the long term, which would have an adverse effect on Sainsbury's stakeholders. On 11 April, the CVC-led consortium abandoned its offer, stating that "it became clear
5500-451: The customer on their home printer, or stored on their mobile device) allow the holder to enter sports arenas, cinemas, theatres, fairgrounds, and transportation, and are used to record the arrival and departure of vehicles from rental facilities etc. This can allow proprietors to identify duplicate or fraudulent tickets more easily. Barcodes are widely used in shop floor control applications software where employees can scan work orders and track
5600-578: The default Pixel Camera app. Nokia's Symbian operating system featured a barcode scanner, while mbarcode is a QR code reader for the Maemo operating system. In Apple iOS 11 , the native camera app can decode QR codes and can link to URLs, join wireless networks, or perform other operations depending on the QR Code contents. Other paid and free apps are available with scanning capabilities for other symbologies or for earlier iOS versions. With BlackBerry devices,
5700-518: The exception of Morrison's, would "operate against the public interest". As part of the approval Morrison's was to dispose of 53 of the combined group's shops. In May 2004, Sainsbury's announced that it would acquire fourteen of these shops, thirteen Safeway shops and one Morrison's outlet, located primarily in the Midlands and the North of England. At the end of March 2004, Davis was promoted to chairman and
5800-502: The factory that was producing the equipment. On 26 June 1974, a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum was scanned, registering the first commercial use of the UPC. In 1971 an IBM team was assembled for an intensive planning session, threshing out, 12 to 18 hours a day, how the technology would be deployed and operate cohesively across the system, and scheduling a roll-out plan. By 1973, the team were meeting with grocery manufacturers to introduce
5900-544: The former Mirror Group site for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture ); Sainsbury's acquired the 25-year lease when Accenture pulled out. Sainsbury's was a founding member of the Nectar loyalty card scheme, which was launched in September 2002, in conjunction with Debenhams , Barclaycard and BP ; Debenhams, Barclaycard and BP have all subsequently left the scheme, although until the chain's demise Nectar points continued to be awarded for online purchases at Debenhams made through
6000-561: The future of Sainsbury's was self-service supermarkets of 10,000 sq ft (930 m ), with eventually the added bonus of a car park for extra convenience. The first self-service branch opened in Croydon in 1950. Sainsbury's was a pioneer in the development of own-brand goods; the aim was to offer products that matched the quality of nationally branded goods but at a lower price. It expanded more cautiously than Tesco , shunning acquisitions, and it never offered trading stamps . Until
6100-452: The group had suffered a decline in performance relative to its competitors and was demoted to third in the groceries market within the United Kingdom. Davis also oversaw an almost £3 billion upgrade of shops, distribution and IT equipment, entitled 'Business Transformation Programme', but his successor would later reveal that much of this investment was wasted and he failed in his key goal – improving availability. Part of this investment saw
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#17328589560736200-476: The industry from scanning by the mid-1970s. Those numbers were not achieved in that time-frame and some predicted the demise of barcode scanning. The usefulness of the barcode required the adoption of expensive scanners by a critical mass of retailers while manufacturers simultaneously adopted barcode labels. Neither wanted to move first and results were not promising for the first couple of years, with Business Week proclaiming "The Supermarket Scanner That Failed" in
6300-419: The linear and bull's eye printing patterns, as well as the mechanical and electronic systems needed to read the code. The patent was issued on 7 October 1952 as US Patent 2,612,994. In 1951, Woodland moved to IBM and continually tried to interest IBM in developing the system. The company eventually commissioned a report on the idea, which concluded that it was both feasible and interesting, but that processing
6400-790: The list of applications was closed: £495 million had been offered for £14.5 million available shares. The Sainsbury family at the time retained 85% of the firm's shares. Most of the senior positions were held by family members. John Davan Sainsbury (later Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover ), a member of the fourth generation of the founding family, took over the chairmanship from his uncle Sir Robert Sainsbury in 1969, who had been chairman for two years from 1967 following Alan Sainsbury's retirement. Sainsbury's started to replace its 10,000 sq ft (930 m ) High Street shops with self-service supermarkets above 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m ), which were either in out of town locations or in regenerated town centres. Sainsbury's policy
6500-420: The local church, temporarily, while a new one was built. This shop was not completed until 1951. In 1956, Alan Sainsbury became chairman after the death of his father, John Benjamin Sainsbury . During the 1950s and 1960s, Sainsbury's was a keen early adopter of self-service supermarkets in the United Kingdom. On a trip to the United States, Alan Sainsbury realised the benefits of self-service shops and believed
6600-400: The offer was rejected. On 9 April, the indicative offer was raised to 582p a share, however this too was rejected. This meant the consortium could not satisfy its own preconditions for a bid, most importantly 75% shareholder support; the combined Sainsbury family holding at the time was 18%. Lord Sainsbury of Turville, who then held 7.75% of Sainsbury's, stated that he could see no reason why
6700-603: The pace of new supershops construction would slow down, and that it would write down the value of some of its properties. In 1994, Sainsbury's announced a new town centre format, Sainsbury's Central, again a response to Tesco's Metro, which was already established in five locations. Also in 1994, Sainsbury's lost the takeover battle for William Low (like Tesco, Sainsbury's had long been under-represented in Scotland). Also that year, David Sainsbury dismissed Tesco's clubcard initiative as 'an electronic version of Green Shield Stamps ';
6800-520: The parameters: Sainsbury%27s J Sainsbury plc , trading as Sainsbury's , is a British supermarket and the second-largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane , London, the company was the largest UK retailer of groceries for most of the 20th century. In 1995, Tesco became the market leader when it overtook Sainsbury's, which has since been ranked second or third: it
6900-420: The point of sale, shoppers can get product discounts or special marketing offers through the address or e-mail address provided at registration. Barcodes are widely used in healthcare and hospital settings , ranging from patient identification (to access patient data, including medical history, drug allergies, etc.) to creating SOAP notes with barcodes to medication management. They are also used to facilitate
7000-401: The president of the local food chain, Food Fair , asking one of the deans to research a system to automatically read product information during checkout. Silver told his friend Norman Joseph Woodland about the request, and they started working on a variety of systems. Their first working system used ultraviolet ink, but the ink faded too easily and was expensive. Convinced that the system
7100-462: The problem. He developed a system called KarTrak using blue, white and red reflective stripes attached to the side of the cars, encoding a four-digit company identifier and a six-digit car number. Light reflected off the colored stripes was read by photomultiplier vacuum tubes. The Boston and Maine Railroad tested the KarTrak system on their gravel cars in 1961. The tests continued until 1967, when
7200-570: The process. In 1981 the United States Department of Defense adopted the use of Code 39 for marking all products sold to the United States military. This system, Logistics Applications of Automated Marking and Reading Symbols (LOGMARS), is still used by DoD and is widely viewed as the catalyst for widespread adoption of barcoding in industrial uses. Barcodes are widely used around the world in many contexts. In stores, UPC barcodes are pre-printed on most items other than fresh produce from
7300-541: The reluctance to move into non-food retailing, the indecision between whether to go for quality or for value, "the sometimes brutal treatment of suppliers" which led to suppliers favouring Tesco over Sainsbury's, and an unsuccessful advertising campaign fronted by John Cleese . At the end of 1993, it announced price cuts on three hundred of its most popular own label lines. Significantly, this came three months after Tesco had launched its line Tesco Value . A few months later, Sainsbury's announced that margins had fallen, that
7400-590: The resulting information would require equipment that was some time off in the future. IBM offered to buy the patent, but the offer was not accepted. Philco purchased the patent in 1962 and then sold it to RCA sometime later. During his time as an undergraduate, David Jarrett Collins worked at the Pennsylvania Railroad and became aware of the need to automatically identify railroad cars. Immediately after receiving his master's degree from MIT in 1959, he started work at GTE Sylvania and began addressing
7500-492: The rights to the original Woodland patent, attended the meeting and initiated an internal project to develop a system based on the bullseye code. The Kroger grocery chain volunteered to test it. In the mid-1970s the NAFC established the Ad-Hoc Committee for U.S. Supermarkets on a Uniform Grocery-Product Code to set guidelines for barcode development. In addition, it created a symbol-selection subcommittee to help standardize
7600-411: The same company, Barcoding systems are not radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems. Many companies use both technologies as part of larger resource management systems. A typical barcode system consist of some infrastructure, either wired or wireless that connects some number of mobile computers, handheld scanners, and printers to one or many databases that store and analyze the data collected by
7700-459: The second largest retailer of groceries in the northeastern United States (primarily in New England). In June 1987, Sainsbury's acquired the rest of the company. In 1985, the chairman reported that over the preceding 10 years profits had grown from £15 million to over £168 million, a compound annual rise of 30.4% – after allowing for inflation a real annual growth rate of 17.6%. In 1991,
7800-467: The separation and indexing of documents that have been imaged in batch scanning applications, track the organization of species in biology, and integrate with in-motion checkweighers to identify the item being weighed in a conveyor line for data collection. They can also be used to keep track of objects and people; they are used to keep track of rental cars, airline luggage, nuclear waste, express mail, and parcels. Barcoded tickets (which may be printed by
7900-409: The symbol that would need to be printed on the packaging or labels of all of their products. There were no cost savings for a grocery to use it, unless at least 70% of the grocery's products had the barcode printed on the product by the manufacturer. IBM projected that 75% would be needed in 1975. Economic studies conducted for the grocery industry committee projected over $ 40 million in savings to
8000-468: The system. At some level there must be some software to manage the system. The software may be as simple as code that manages the connection between the hardware and the database or as complex as an ERP , MRP , or some other inventory management software. A wide range of hardware is manufactured for use in barcode systems by such manufacturers as Datalogic, Intermec, HHP (Hand Held Products), Microscan Systems , Unitech, Metrologic, PSC, and PANMOBIL, with
8100-508: The time spent on a job. Barcodes are also used in some kinds of non-contact 1D and 2D position sensors . A series of barcodes are used in some kinds of absolute 1D linear encoder . The barcodes are packed close enough together that the reader always has one or two barcodes in its field of view. As a kind of fiducial marker , the relative position of the barcode in the field of view of the reader gives incremental precise positioning, in some cases with sub-pixel resolution . The data decoded from
8200-476: The width ratios. Stacked symbologies are also optimized for laser scanning, with the laser making multiple passes across the barcode. In the 1990s development of charge-coupled device (CCD) imagers to read barcodes was pioneered by Welch Allyn . Imaging does not require moving parts, as a laser scanner does. In 2007, linear imaging had begun to supplant laser scanning as the preferred scan engine for its performance and durability. 2D symbologies cannot be read by
8300-465: Was a vicious circle." Christensen said a fundamental mistake was to build four such depots at once, rather than building one which could be thoroughly tested before progressing with the others. In 2007, Sainsbury's announced a further £12 million investment in its depots to keep pace with sales growth and the removal of the failed automated systems from its depots. In addition, it did a deal with IBM to upgrade its Electronic Point of Sale systems as
8400-697: Was decided that a separate brand was no longer needed, and the shops were converted to the regular Sainsbury's supershop format in September 1999. Sainsbury's diversified further in 1979, forming a joint venture with the Belgian retailer, GB-Inno-BM, to set up a chain of do-it-yourself shops under the Homebase name. Sainsbury's also trebled the size of its Homebase do it yourself business during 1996, by merging its business with Texas Homecare , which it acquired in January 1995 from Ladbroke for £290 million. Sainsbury's sold
8500-436: Was forced to quit in the face of an impending shareholder revolt, over his salary and bonuses. Investors were angered by a bonus share award of over £2 million, despite poor company performance. On 19 July 2004, Davis' replacement Philip Hampton, was appointed as chairman. King ordered a direct mail campaign to one million Sainsbury's customers as part of his six-month business review, asking them what they wanted from
8600-453: Was found to be easily fooled by dirt in certain applications, which greatly affected accuracy. The AAR abandoned the system in the late 1970s, and it was not until the mid-1980s that they introduced a similar system, this time based on radio tags. The railway project had failed, but a toll bridge in New Jersey requested a similar system so that it could quickly scan for cars that had purchased
8700-415: Was generally well received by both the stock market and the media. Immediate plans included laying off over 750 headquarters staff, and the recruitment of around 3,000 shop floor staff, to improve the quality of service and address the firm's main problem: stock availability. The aim would be to increase sales revenue by £2.5 billion by the financial year ending March 2008. Another significant announcement
8800-469: Was in the UK supermarket group Sainsbury's in 1972 using shelf-mounted barcodes which were developed by Plessey . In June 1974, Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio used a scanner made by Photographic Sciences Corporation to scan the Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode on a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum. QR codes , a specific type of 2D barcode, rose in popularity in the second decade of
8900-613: Was invented by Norman Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver and patented in the US in 1952. The invention was based on Morse code that was extended to thin and thick bars. However, it took over twenty years before this invention became commercially successful. UK magazine Modern Railways December 1962 pages 387–389 record how British Railways had already perfected a barcode-reading system capable of correctly reading rolling stock travelling at 100 mph (160 km/h) with no mistakes. An early use of one type of barcode in an industrial context
9000-481: Was overtaken by Asda from 2003 to 2014, and again for one month in 2019. In 2018, a planned merger with Asda was blocked by the Competition and Markets Authority over concerns of increased prices for consumers. The holding company, J Sainsbury plc, is split into three divisions: Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd ( including convenience shops ), Sainsbury's Bank , and Argos . As of 2021, the largest overall shareholder
9100-518: Was promoted to be group chief executive. In June 1999, Sainsbury's unveiled its new corporate identity . This was developed by 20/20 Design and Strategy, and included The strapline was dropped in May 2005, and replaced in September of that year by "Try something new today." This new brand statement was created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO . While the Interstate font was used almost exclusively for many years,
9200-564: Was replaced as CEO by Justin King . King joined Sainsbury's from Marks & Spencer where he was a director with responsibility for its food division and Kings Super Markets, Inc. subsidiary in the United States. Schooled in Solihull near Birmingham, and a graduate of the University of Bath, where he took a business administration degree, King was also previously a managing director at Asda with responsibility for hypermarkets. In June 2004, Davis
9300-604: Was replaced by his eldest son, John Benjamin Sainsbury , who had gone into partnership with his father in 1915. During the 1930s and 1940s, the company continued to refine its product offerings and maintain its leadership in terms of shop design, convenience, and cleanliness. The company acquired the Midlands-based Thoroughgood chain in 1936. The founder's grandsons Alan Sainsbury (later Lord Sainsbury) and Sir Robert Sainsbury became joint managing directors in 1938, after their father, John Benjamin Sainsbury, had
9400-403: Was sponsored by the Association of American Railroads in the late 1960s. Developed by General Telephone and Electronics (GTE) and called KarTrak ACI (Automatic Car Identification), this scheme involved placing colored stripes in various combinations on steel plates which were affixed to the sides of railroad rolling stock. Two plates were used per car, one on each side, with the arrangement of
9500-467: Was studied, including linear codes, RCA's bullseye concentric circle code, starburst patterns and others. In the spring of 1971 RCA demonstrated their bullseye code at another industry meeting. IBM executives at the meeting noticed the crowds at the RCA booth and immediately developed their own system. IBM marketing specialist Alec Jablonover remembered that the company still employed Woodland, and he established
9600-424: Was succeeded as chairman and chief executive by his cousin, David Sainsbury (later Lord Sainsbury of Turville ); this brought about a change in management style – David was more consensual and less hierarchical, but not in strategy or in corporate beliefs about the company's place in the market. Mistakes by David Sainsbury and his successors, Dino Adriano and Peter Davis , included the rejection of loyalty cards,
9700-420: Was the halving of the dividend to increase funds available for price cuts and quality. King hired Lawrence Christensen as supply chain director in 2004. Previously he was an expert in logistics at Safeway , but left following its takeover by Morrisons . Immediate supply chain improvements included the reactivation of two distribution centres. At the time of the business review on 19 October 2004, referring to
9800-611: Was to invest in uniform, well designed shops with a strong emphasis on quality; its slogan was "good food costs less at Sainsbury's". During the 1970s, the average size of Sainsbury's shops rose from 10,000 sq ft (930 m ) to around 18,000 sq ft (1,700 m ); the first edge of town shop, with 24,000 sq ft (2,200 m ) of selling space, was opened at Coldhams Lane in Cambridge in 1974. The last counter service branch closed in Peckham in 1982. To participate in
9900-530: Was used to identify a dozen types of transmissions moving on an overhead conveyor from production to shipping. The other scanning system was installed at General Trading Company's distribution center in Carlstadt, New Jersey to direct shipments to the proper loading bay. In 1966 the National Association of Food Chains (NAFC) held a meeting on the idea of automated checkout systems. RCA , which had purchased
10000-469: Was workable with further development, Woodland left Drexel, moved into his father's apartment in Florida, and continued working on the system. His next inspiration came from Morse code, and he formed his first barcode from sand on the beach. "I just extended the dots and dashes downwards and made narrow lines and wide lines out of them." To read them, he adapted technology from optical soundtracks in movies, using
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