I hated punch cards as a method of data input, it was long winded, extremely tedious, and prone to error. The process of transferring data under punching forms, then having to check the punched cards, then making corrections was extremely slow. You could not rely on a stack of punched cards being input to the computer in the order in which you had produced stop you have therefore to include enough information on the punched card to identify's position relative to its neighbours so that it could be sorted in the right order once input.
Eventually as more reliable smaller computers were developed key to disk systems replaced punched cards in larger companies. This improved the speed of collecting data, and eventually as more processing power became available on screen validation and eventually complete on-screenforms came into use
Contrast this with the current supermarket checkout systems were selling the barcode on a grocery item produces a vast amount of data not only is the product identified but the time and date of the transaction is also recorded and the checkout operator performed the transaction. The buying patterns of the customers are also recorded. If the customer has a loyalty card a lot more information is available to supermarket management customers should really be paid having loyalty cards since I live they are saving the supermarket a considerable amount of money in marketing analysis.
Barcodes have been in successful use for many years years, but the major limitation is of course the barcode has to be visible. Modern two-dimensional barcodes store vast amount of information, but the real system of interest to retailers is the RFID tag. Systems have been demonstrated for many years for identifying the products inthe customer's basket or trolley.This opened up enormous but somewhat worrying possibilities That the items in a basket or trolley could be tracked not only around the store but also when exiting the store are two more obvious ones.
The principal of printing RFID tags has now been developed and there appears to be a problem with deciding who prints the labels and when and where the tag is fixed.