ROC Software announced its Formation electronic forms design and print utility now supports printing two-dimensional MaxiCode symbols used on package labels for high-speed sorting and processing. Originally developed by UPS, MaxiCode has been placed in the public domain and is now endorsed by the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG), American National Standards Institute (ANSI), Department of Defense (DOD), and the Automatic Identification Manufacturers trade association (AIM) as the most appropriate symbology for sorting and tracking packages. The MaxiCode symbol is supported through Formation’s callable intrinsics. One of MaxiCode’s key benefits is that it can be read at high speeds from any angle. It is the best symbol to use, for example, for packages traveling rapidly along the 550 feet-per-minute conveyor belts used in the shipping industry. MaxiCode holds up to 93 characters in one square inch. It would take a bar code of approximately 20 square inches to hold the same amount of data.

Because of its built-in error correction, a MaxiCode symbol can be read even if up to 60 percent of the symbol has been damaged or is missing. Maxicode holds the transporting company’s required fields (postal and country codes, tracking number, service class, shipper I.D., and carrier code). A second level is customizable and could contain data such as PO number, customer ID or product code. Formation lets customers indicate what data they want coded into MaxiCode and where to place the symbol on the package. Because of its small size, a MaxiCode symbol can easily be incorporated into existing label designs and only requires 300 dpi printer resolution.