A guide to the industrial and commercial use of barcodes in overall data-collection systems in such areas as marketing, engineering, production, quality assurance, material control, accounting, sales, and shipping. Emphasizes the value of realtime data processing that makes information available to affect a transaction in process. Topics include barcode language and its symbols and ciphering, networking with other electronic systems, distributed intelligence to provide memory and processing at workstations, and barcode support for Just-In-time. Appendices by various authors discuss such topics as barcodes in Brazil and industrial coding standards. Includes a long glossary without pronunciation. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.