Portable Appliance Testing, or simply known as PAT testing, is a very important test required by the British government requiring tests to be performed that measure the safety of electrical appliances. Some appliances, such as the microwave, must be tested to ensure that there are no harmful emissions being released that could be passed onto its users or technicians. Other appliances, such as hand-drills must be tested to ensure they can be used without the user being electrocuted or otherwise harmed with its use. The history of these tests, as they are typically required every few months for more dangerous appliances, and sometimes annually for lesser dangerous appliances, must be kept as to allow technicians to know the result of tests performed in the task.

Utilizing new technology that’s been implicated everywhere from warehouses to retail stores, the use of barcodes on PAT testing labels is becoming a very popular and crucial part PAT testing. By allowing the entire history of an appliance’s testing results to be stored in a barcode, the people who have to test the appliances have all the information they need to make important decisions regarding the appliances safety and what sort of result they should apply.

There is a lot of potential and benefit in the use of barcodes as means of storing important data collected by Portable Appliance Testing. Instead of having to write down information and the history of the tests, technicians can now input the data directly to a wireless database and with a simple scan of a scanning device, information can be instantly accessed and evaluated on the spot wherever the technician may be. This use of digital data can cut down on a lot of writing and note taking for workers, and can eliminate any problems that could arise with the inability to read certain handwritings.

The obvious benefit and advantage of the use of barcodes with PAT testing can be easily noticed with compared with the system that does not use any bar codes on the labels. Traditionally, when a PAT test is performed, only the most recent information can be jotted down on the label, which severely restricts what sorts of information one can put on the label, as the tester is limited to the size of the label. However, with the use of barcodes on PAT testing labels, essentially an unlimited amount of information can be accessed on even the smallest of labels. This has the ability to the job itself that much more safe and easy to perform by testers, as a complete list and source of the valuable data required to make decisions regarding an appliances safety can be made with all information in mind.

It seems as time goes on, the obvious superiority of barcode use with PAT testing will become apparent and most PAT labels will move towards their usage. For testers who require, or simply feel safer knowing all of the information regarding an appliance as they service it, this mode of information display is a must.