Why the tool
The application was created starting in 2013 out of necessity and for my own use to test barcode label printers; then in 2014 my customer contacted me with a request. I was presented with a challenge – find something to do with the wall-to-wall inventory team during their downtime. Labeling was the most pressing need that my customer had at the time. However, none of these contractors (or I) had Navy ERP access and I did not want to show up at a site and ask the warehouse staff repeatedly to print individual labels for us. So I had to devise a way to easily print labels in bulk, preferably before I showed up on-site. So I took my own Access tool and began turning it into something more user-friendly. I must admit that my early inspiration was NAVSUP BSC’s bin label tool that was written in Excel and VBA. However, because the file was encrypted, I stopped being able to use it in 2013 when its encryption certificate expired and that was the reason I started developing my own tool. Continue reading “History of the Material Label Tool”