An internationally recognized authority at the ISO level on barcode and RFID Automatic Identification Technologies, and in applications in supply chain tracking.
Dr Clive Hohberger
an internationally recognized authority at the ISO level on barcode and RFID Automatic Identification Technologies, and in applications in supply chain tracking. He has been a member of global technical standards committees for virtually all 2D barcodes used today, including QR Code. He invented Ultracode, the first 2D color barcode symbology, now undergoing global standardization as ISO 25449.
Expertise
Clive was an active contributor to GS1 in global application standards for the Supply Chain, especially in Healthcare. He consulted to major companies such as Baxter International and Intuitive Surgical in their implementation of the FDA’s UDI medical device labeling standard.
Clive’s international leadership in the International Society for Blood Transfusion as Editor of the ISBT128 global standard for Blood Barcoding (ratified in 1994) not only standardized global blood distribution but also created a major market for Zebra barcode printers. In their 2019 Lisbon meeting, the World Health Organization formally accepted ISBT128 as the global standard for labeling and tracking of all medical products of human origin (MPHOs).
As a Corporate VP at Zebra Technologies in 1985, Clive capitalized on the inability of then market leader Printronix’s dot matrix printing to meet DoD and Walmart barcode quality standards. Zebra developed a disruptive high-resolution thermal transfer barcode printer that was lower cost, more productive, and exceeded label quality expectations. Expanding the disruption, Zebra went after Printronix’s distribution channels and took over many of their customers, including Walmart, UPS, FedEx, and DoD. He also foresaw that barcode printers would need continual upgrades and integration with IT systems such as SAS. He invented the extensible ZPL® programming language now common to all Zebra printers.
Education and Personal Life
Clive received his MBA from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management (where he was valedictorian), completed Postdoctoral work at the Montreal Neurological Institute (McGill University) in computer-assisted neurosurgery, and his PhD in computer engineering, Master’s Degree in engineering, and a Bachelor’s Degree in physics from Case Western Reserve University.
Specialties
- Strategy / Market Identification
- Ideation / Innovation / Digital Transformation
- Problem Statements / Requirements Generation
- Architecture / Technology Selection
- Implementation / Testing / Deployment
- Manufacturing / Supply Chain / Logistics
- Trustworthy systems (security, privacy, reliability, safety, resilience, compliance, etc.)
- Patents / Intellectual Property
- Sustainability
Industries
- AI
- Datacenters
- Edge Computing
- Communication Networks
- Internet of Things
- Smart Manufacturing
- Logistics / Transportation
- Smart Cities / Buildings
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