The Barcode Creator on Changing Our Supply Chain Forever

It was fairly recent history when supermarket food items had to be manually restamped each time the price increased, with clerks running up and down the aisles to do inventory. Paul McEnroe, creator of the barcode, remembers searching for cans with lower price tags from the back of the shelf when shopping for his mother.  

Now, barcodes are all around us, scanned ten billion times a day. On today’s episode, we dive into the fascinating story of its creation and the decades of innovation that changed retail and manufacturing around the world.  

In the 1960s, McEnroe hired seven engineers considered “harder to manage" for a start-up-like project at IBM to tackle applications at the periphery of computers. The team created the first commercial application of laser technology, the barcode scanner, and the magnetic code for Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) marking. McEnroe outlines how this technology vastly increased supermarket efficiency, despite initial pushback including picket lines at stores and new state laws. He also discusses the QR code, which he sees as an extension of the barcode.  

This episode is brought to you by SHI’s new generative AI briefings. 

Uncover your road map to innovation with a series of briefings and workshops designed by our technology experts. Contact your Account Executive or visit shi.com to learn more.  

Innovation Heroes is an SHI podcast. New episodes are now available on Youtube and all major podcast platforms. Visit https://blog.shi.com/podcasts/