Summary

As reported in the January 1987 issue of "newspaper techniques", the IFRA Newsprint Committee has decided in favour of a 16-digit bar code for reel wrappings. The code selected was the numeric Interleave 2/5. With this decision, the Committee brought lengthy discussions to a conclusion and hopes that now it will be possible for the maximum benefit to be drawn from this modern means of communication. Contained in the 16 digits is the manufacturer identification code, as demanded by newspapers, as well as further information, such as grammage. But to what extent is it already used in practice? A few "pioneers" started some time ago either with practical or theoretical preparations for the introduction of a bar code-oriented reel control system. In view of the fact that this application is attracting a greatly increasing amount of interest among many newspapers, as the frequent queries received by IFRA show, we organised a Forum last November with the express aim of providing a platform for a sharing of the experiences gained so far. The opportunity was availed of also to define some aspects that could be improved, for example the readability of printed codes, the demands for future developments such as the automatic reading of the code