Bar Code Reader Program Specifications

The Electronic Data Collection Program Documentation Manual provides various structure charts and bar code reader specifications to help you interface the data collection device with a personal computer and MAC-PAC software.  Note that the actual programming code for the structure charts and reader specifications is not provided, because data collection can be performed in many different ways, and with many different data collection devices.

When programming the data collection device to accept component issue pick transactions and sales order pick transactions, picking validation can be downloaded from the host system to the data collection device to allow validation at the collection device level.  This validation will help to eliminate incorrect pick transactions at the warehouse level.

Structure charts are provided to help you design PC programs necessary to pass file information back and forth between the host system and the data collection device.  These programs will serve as the interface programs between the PC and the host system.

Also included are data file layouts of each transaction file used by MAC-PAC to hold the collected data.  It is the client's responsibility to ensure that the data arrives to the host system in the expected format.  These layouts can be used to program a data collection device so that the data does in fact arrive in the expected format.  The specifications package indicates which fields are required by MAC-PAC to complete a transaction successfully, as well as indicating a sample field entry sequence for each transaction type.  You may wish to use these guidelines to program the data collection device to accept MAC-PAC transactions.