TL Ashford Preps For Looming 2D Barcode Mandate

February 24, 2025 Alex Woodie

The humble barcode traces its roots to 1974, when a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum was scanned into a System/370 mainframe at a market in Marsh, Ohio. Fast forward 51 years, and the retail industry is on the cusp of requiring a new generation of two-dimensional barcodes. TL Ashford is preparing to help IBM i shops comply with industry mandates around 2D barcodes, as well as to find creative ways to exploit the vast new data they contain.

The original Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode is composed of 30 vertical lines of varying width, which is sufficient for storing …