1D and 2D solutions for traceability in an Electronic Manufacturing Services company

Recording every aspect of the manufacturing process, from materials to production processes, whether at the board level or the entire system build, thus providing full product and process traceability, helps manufacturers to limit the scope of product recalls and reduces associated recall costs, while providing for compliance to a variety of environmental and safety regulations across all segments of the industry. The requirements of the Quality Assurance Systems in Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) and not only, has a continue demand for more information to be recorded onto the accompanying data storage vehicles that consist mainly of different types of labels in order to accomplished the traceability demand. The compatibility of bar code and data matrix with the traceability demands of the EMS is an actual issue and the choice of one over the other an every day question for the manufacturers. The paper is looking into this subject attempting to make a classification of the usage of data matrix and bar code systems and attempting a comparison of the two methods in accordance with the production requirements.