UPC Barcodes

Global Standards Organization (GS1 US)

The GS1 US is a not-for-profit Standards Organization that develops and maintains global barcode standards and provides unique identifiers. UPCs obtained directly from the GS1 US will work at any retail store or online selling platform.

or

UPCs obtained directly from the GS1 US include:

• Registration of your Company and Product information directly into the global database of UPC information (GS1 DataHub)
• UPC Company & Product information publicly available (Verified by GS1)
• Certificate of Ownership issued by the GS1 US
• .EPS and .PNG graphic file of UPC barcode

Sunrise 2005 GTIN Initiative: Key Changes

Introduced Universal Terms

• Trade Item - Any product or service upon which there is a need to retrieve pre-defined information and that may be priced or ordered or invoiced at any point in any supply chain
• Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) was the new term for the 14-digit data structure to uniquely identify trade items within the EAN\UCC system. This was a new term only, not a standards change.

Global Standards updated to represent a GTIN in a 14-digit database field:

• A common database length was necessary to support global commerce and different levels of packaging.
• Create 14 digits by adding zeroes to the front of GTIN data structures which contain only 8-digits, 12-digits or 13-digits. See example.

Variable length GS1 Company Prefixes became available (7 - 11 digits).

• The Uniform Code Council initially issued all members a six digit UPC Company Prefix Number which would serve as their own prefix to their UPC.
• Expanding to multiple length prefixes exponentially increased the number of available GTINs which can be assigned.