Meet the exponent of bar coding in RP

It has been said that there are three types of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who have no idea what happened. Conrado Dayrit III, president of Symbol Sciences Inc. and the acknowledged exponent of bar code technology in the country, definitely belongs to the rare breed of individuals who set things in motion.

From the start of his professional management career up to the present, Dayrit has always been a "doer." Now the president of the country’s leading bar code company, he remains a take-charge guy.

"I’m a hands-on-person," he states categorically. "Although I also acknowledge that as the company grows, that has to change. But since I started this company, I have to know what’s going on. I think that at start-up, an entrepreneur should be hands-on."

This philosophy and his personal commitment to make a difference has led this true-blue Atenean to achieve pioneering success. Case in point is his becoming the exponent of bar code technology in the country.

According to Dayrit, he was in the United States in 1986 when the usefulness of bar code technology caught his fancy. "I realized back then that there were only a handful of companies in the Philippines that were using bar coding in their operations. These were mainly multinational semiconductor companies. But these companies were only printing bar code labels for their boxes as mandated by their corporate headquarters. That was the extent of the use of bar codes then," he recalled.

Aware of the enormous benefits that bar coding can give local supermarket operators, he studied the technology, immersed himself in its benefits and advantages, and headed back to the Philippines.

Dayrit clarified that bar coding was not exactly a new technology. In fact, the United States Defense Department has been requiring its suppliers since 1973 to bar-code the products it procured for various reasons. "If they get products, say bullets that wouldn’t fire or grenades that wouldn’t explode, they want to know right away who the supplier was, when was the product purchased, what was the batch number, etc.," he said. Because of its advantages of speed with accuracy compared to traditional methods of data acquisition, bar coding soon found commercial application.

Knowing early on that supermarkets were the way to go if bar coding was to take off in the country, Dayrit worked closely with retail groups such as the Philippine Association of Supermarkets Inc. (PASI) to establish the Philippine Article Numbering Council (PANC) to promote the Universal Product Code/International Article Numbering System (UPC/EAN) – the global standard for source-marking of products sold in supermarkets and groceries. This, ultimately, paved the way for the growing adoption of bar code technology in the country. The rest, as they say, is now history.

Today, Dayrit’s Symbol Sciences Inc. remains the leader in the local bar code industry. According to Dayrit, SSI’s continuing success is anchored on three things, foremost of which are the companies it represents. The company is the exclusive distributor in the Philippines of Symbol Technologies – the leading bar code and wireless data collection company in the world.

Complementing this are the company’s well-trained and highly qualified engineers and technicians who are regularly sent abroad for training on Symbol’s new technologies. Lastly, SSI’s concentration on software application.

The latter actually helps companies who want to use the technology but are not yet ready to junk their old systems. "I believe there is a lot of integration to be done. The challenge on our part is to be able to integrate the new technology into their old system. This is where our systems and software come in handy," Dayrit said.

With the way things are going, SSI is clearly up to the challenge, what with its growing roster of clients that include the biggest manufacturing and distribution companies in the country.

Today, there is hardly any product that you can buy in the supermarket or anywhere that does not have a bar code printed or attached to its package. Yet, the technology has transcended retail applications. Symbol’s modern technology has given birth to two-dimensional bar codes that are capable of storing machine-readable biometric data such as photographs, fingerprints, signatures as well as graphic and numerical data. This is now being used in identification cards, driver’s licenses and other sensitive government records like NBI and police clearances.

With bar code technology’s growing application, there is no telling how it can further make positive identification and data gathering faster and more convenient. One thing is sure though: Dayrit and Symbol Sciences Inc. will continue blazing the trail.