Intermec Corp, a Litton Industries Inc company based in Beverly Hills, California, has a new scanning technology called area scanning: the new technology is said to be more efficient and less costly than conventional laser scanning methods in automated, high-speed sorting and tracking applications; the US Postal Service will become the first user of this technology, and under a subcontract from Martin Marietta Corp, expected to be worth $24m over the next two years, the company will supply nearly 2,000 of the scanners which will be installed throughout the US to automate the sorting and routing of third-class mail; the technology enables users to read bar codes or other symbols regardless of position or orientation on objects of different shapes, and the Intermec readers identify these bar codes at speed.
