Poorly designed barcode scanners have a negative impact on the health and productivity of logistics workers and parcel deliverers. This is according to the research report 'Scanning: pain without results' by research firm Opinion Matters.
63 per cent of logistics employees are reported to have wrist or arm pain and 52 per cent suffer from RSI complaints. Opinion Matters, which conducted the survey on behalf of Panasonic Business, states in the report that 60 per cent of employees say that pain or RSI is caused by holding the barcode scanner. This is said to be partly due to the huge growth in the industry: the average employee performs 197 scans a day and that figure is estimated to be growing by 24 per cent a year. Employees who are dissatisfied with the device think that changes in design can bring productivity improvements. In the report, the 500 respondents give some areas for improvement: signature capture failure (19 per cent) causes a lot of annoyance: on average, a signature is not captured every two days. When looking at the barcode scanners themselves, the most frequently mentioned areas for improvement are: battery life (46 per cent), screen readability (27 per cent), scanning difficulty (14 per cent) and the number of scanning attempts (14 per cent).
Workers indicated that with scan activation buttons on both sides of the device, the number of successful scans could increase. They also expect that with an angled barcode scanner and an accurate pen, scanning productivity will improve.
Editorial LogistiekProfs
