If you're about to start tracking jobs by scanning a code on each job card, the first thing to settle is which code. A traditional barcode, the striped kind on a tin of beans. Or a QR code, the square one you point a phone at. Both will track a job perfectly well. The reason most small factories land on one over the other has almost nothing to do with the codes themselves.
The short version
For most small and medium workshops, QR codes win. Not because they hold more data, though they do, but because every one of your workers already carries a scanner in their pocket. Their phone reads a QR code straight out of the box. A barcode, in practice, wants a proper scanner, and proper scanners cost money and go walkabout.
What you scan with
Barcodes were built for laser scanners, the handheld guns at a till. A phone camera can read one, but it's fussier about the angle, how far away you hold it, and whether the label printed cleanly. QR codes were made to be read by a camera, so a phone gets them quickly, from most angles, even when the card has been folded into a back pocket all morning.
On a clean desk this difference is nothing. On a floor, where the job card has a thumbprint of cutting fluid on it and the light is poor, it's the difference between a scan that just works and a worker holding the card up to the window swearing at it.
Standing up to the workshop
QR codes carry error correction. A chunk of the code can be scratched, smudged or torn off and the thing still scans. A barcode gives up the moment the stripes smear across their width, which on a busy floor is most of them by Thursday. If a code has to survive real handling, the QR is the tougher animal.
Barcodes do have one genuine edge. For the same information, a short barcode prints in a narrower strip. But a job card has room to spare, so this almost never matters unless you're labelling tiny parts.
What it costs
The labels cost about the same either way. The difference is the reader. Go with barcodes and you're usually buying handheld scanners, one per workstation, which adds up fast, plus the odd replacement when one walks off or gets dropped in a drum of coolant. Go with QR codes and the reader is a phone the worker already owns. Nothing extra to buy, nothing to share.
When a barcode still makes sense
If you already have barcode scanners at every station, label stock in the cupboard and staff who know the drill, leave it alone. It works, and ripping out a working system to save nothing is daft. Barcodes also keep the edge for very high-volume repeat scanning at a fixed station with a dedicated gun, the kind of thing you see in a busy dispatch bay.
Where that leaves you
Starting fresh in a small factory, QR codes give you reliable scanning on hardware your team already carries, a code that shrugs off a dirty floor, and no scanner bill. That's why ScanPath uses a QR code you print on each job card and scan on any phone. If you want to see how that fits into the rest of a job's life, how it works covers it, or you can start a trial and print a few.