Published May 2003

Intermec sees
label orders pick up

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

Intermec Technologies Corp. in Everett has the brightest potential for growth of any of Unova’s divisions, thanks to the increasing use of its information and inventory tracking systems.

That’s the message from Steve Winter, Unova’s Senior Vice President for Global Service and Intellectual Property. He addressed the Snohomish County Economic Development Council at its recent quarterly meeting at Lynnwood’s Embassy Suites.

Intermec, well known as the inventor of the world’s most widely used bar-code systems, has moved into new areas, including supply-chain information products, services and systems for companies in hundreds of industries around the world.

The systems allow companies to compile enormous amounts of information about production, sales, shipping and inventory, allowing users to reduce warehouse space, cut labor costs, accelerate manufacturing and improve profitability. Because the company is so deeply involved in customers’ inventories, it’s also an indicator of the ebb and flow of the economy, he said.

“Just as we saw the slump in the economy coming nearly three years ago when orders for bar-code labels began to slow, we are seeing label orders pick up again, showing that businesses are re-building inventory. Overall, we have more business in the pipeline now for Intermec than at any point in the past three years,” Winter said.

Also, the company’s ability to track inventory in a variety of situations all over the world has brought new business, including military sources. Nearly every piece of equipment shipped to American troops in Iraq was tracked with Intermec equipment. The Army uses bar-code labels to mark shipping containers, bar-code scanners to read those labels and hand-held computing devices to store and track data about all of the food, ammunition and other needs of the military units, he said.

Intermec also plays a key role in new high-tech NEXUS smart-card systems that track frequent-driver traffic through border checkpoints between the United States and Canada. The firm created the biometric cards that pre-qualified motorists flash in front of an electronic scanning device at the I-5 border crossing for faster entry into either country through the NEXUS lanes.

Inside the border-guard stations, the scanned card generates a screen display that includes a photo, fingerprints and detailed information about each driver and passenger — each person in a vehicle must carry and display their personal NEXUS card. The NEXUS system, in use at three border crossings in the state, wouldn’t be possible without Intermec’s radio frequency identification chips and electronic readers.

Winter’s company, Unova, is moving its global headquarters to Intermec’s Everett site from its Woodland Hills, Calif., offices. The move of the billion-dollar company is expected to be completed by July, Winter said.

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