Metrologic Provides Book-of-the-Month Club With A Total Bar Code Scanning Solution
Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc. selects Metrologic's HoloTrak® IS8300 industrial bar code scanners for processing book returns.
Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc., a division of Time Inc., was founded in 1926 with 4,750 members and services customers throughout the country. In 1999, the company's nine clubs and two continuity programs distributed more than 40 million books, CDs, and videocassettes to its members in the United States and more than 60 countries. Total membership in the clubs is over 4.5 million. To effectively service this volume of customer activity, a robust and capable bar coding solution became a necessity.
Metrologic's HoloTrak IS8000 Series industrial bar code scanners were chosen for the new solution. The scanners' patented holographic technology enable them to project a very concentrated omnidirectional scan pattern. The IS8300 model, for example, produces 5,250 scan lines per second, enabling it to read small, high-density bar codes, such as those often found on books.
"What makes this installation significant is that Metrologic provided a complete, integrated system," adds Joe Milacci, Metrologic's vice president of automation. "Although Metrologic does not ordinarily serve as an integrator, we made an exception at the request of Book-of-the-Month Club, which wanted a single vendor on the project. In addition to providing the scanner, we sourced and integrated virtually every component Book-of-the-Month Club needed for its Mechanicsburg, PA project site."
Since the system's installation in July 1999, Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc. has reported a high level of satisfaction. According to Tom Greenebaum, senior vice president and general manager with Book-of-the-Month Club, "The system Metrologic installed has greatly improved the speed and accuracy of our returns processing operation, setting throughput records week after week, virtually eliminating human error and freeing us up to do other tasks." The Book-of-the-Month Club host system uses data from the scanned bar codes to record incoming returns, then later uses the data to determine product buying trends and customer preferences.
Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc., a division of Time Inc., was founded in 1926 with 4,750 members and services customers throughout the country. In 1999, the company's nine clubs and two continuity programs distributed more than 40 million books, CDs, and videocassettes to its members in the United States and more than 60 countries. Total membership in the clubs is over 4.5 million. To effectively service this volume of customer activity, a robust and capable bar coding solution became a necessity.
Metrologic's HoloTrak IS8000 Series industrial bar code scanners were chosen for the new solution. The scanners' patented holographic technology enable them to project a very concentrated omnidirectional scan pattern. The IS8300 model, for example, produces 5,250 scan lines per second, enabling it to read small, high-density bar codes, such as those often found on books.
"What makes this installation significant is that Metrologic provided a complete, integrated system," adds Joe Milacci, Metrologic's vice president of automation. "Although Metrologic does not ordinarily serve as an integrator, we made an exception at the request of Book-of-the-Month Club, which wanted a single vendor on the project. In addition to providing the scanner, we sourced and integrated virtually every component Book-of-the-Month Club needed for its Mechanicsburg, PA project site."
Since the system's installation in July 1999, Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc. has reported a high level of satisfaction. According to Tom Greenebaum, senior vice president and general manager with Book-of-the-Month Club, "The system Metrologic installed has greatly improved the speed and accuracy of our returns processing operation, setting throughput records week after week, virtually eliminating human error and freeing us up to do other tasks." The Book-of-the-Month Club host system uses data from the scanned bar codes to record incoming returns, then later uses the data to determine product buying trends and customer preferences.