Evolution of Product Identification Standards:
From UPC to GTIN to EPC to RFID
Presented to: Richard Randall
Business Advisor
July 13, 2004

 Update on QRS
 Product Identification Standards
– History of the Barcode and UPC
– Current utilization (UPC and EAN)
– Clarification on “Sunrise 2005” and GTIN
– Future – Electronic Product Code (EPC) and RFID
 Update on UCCnet
–
Evolving to the Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN)
– Item Data vs. Instance Data
– EPCglobal
 Questions
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
2

 Founded in 1988, only QRS gives retailers and marketers/manufacturers the ability to connect, transact, collaborate and differentiate
 Full suite of collaborative commerce solutions for retail industry
– Global data synchronization
– Industry and retail mandate compliance
– Transaction outsourcing
–
Global trade management
–
Market intelligence
 More than 10,000 retail industry customers rely on QRS to improve supply chain performance and brand equity
“ With QRS we have reduced order errors and cycle times, which translates to reduced costs and better service for our customers.
” — Yusef Akyuz, CIO
The Stride Rite Corporation
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
3

Since we last met…
 Introduced two new Product Information
Management (PIM) software solutions
–
QRS IMPACT
™
– QRS QuickSync ™
 June 17 th announcement
QRS to be acquired by JDA
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
4

1932
Harvard graduate student, Wallace Flint’s “punch card” project.
1948 Bernard Silver & Norman Woodland, graduate students at Drexel
Institute of Technology respond to a local food chain store’s request for a method to automatically read product information at store checkout.
1949 Silver and Woodland filed a patent application for the “Classifying
Apparatus and Method” for “article classification…through the medium of identifying patterns,” which was issued in 1952.
1966 Barcode first used commercially by Kroger based on a concentric ring pattern, but soon realized that there would have to be industry standards.
1969 The NAFC contracted for the development of UGPIC.
1973 The IBM proposal for the UPC, developed by George Laurer, was adopted by the NAFC.
1974 The first UPC “scanned” was a pack Wrigley’s Gum at Marsh’s supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
>70’s Work with competing formats such as magnetic strip and OCR.
1981 Barcode adoption cemented by DOD requirement for marking all products sold to the US military.
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
5

Number
System
Character
Manufacturer
Number
Company Prefix (Block ID)
6-9 digits
Mod-10
Checkdigit
Unique Item
Reference Number to Color/Size Level
5-2 digits

Eventually evolved to the EAN-13, where first 3 digits are the
Country Code. (North America is 000-099.)

And now, the GTIN-
14 where first digit is a “Pack Indicator.”
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
6

 The first digit of a GTIN-14 is a level of packing indicator
 A higher level pack of a single UPC can be assigned a “Case GTIN:”
– Where the root of the Case GTIN is the lower level UPC
– Where the first digit of the Case
GTIN is not “0” or “9”*
– And the checkdigit has been recalculated appropriately
 A case or higher pack level may be assigned a new UPC (Pre-Pack UPC),
or if case is homogeneous (only 1
UPC in the case), then a “Case GTIN”
(where the first digit is not “0” or “9”) can be assigned to the case
Widget X
Case of 12 Widget X’s
*
“9” is reserved for variable weight/measure items
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
UPC-12: 123456 00001 8
GTIN-14: 00 123456 00001 8
Pre-pack
UPC -12: 123456 00721 5
GTIN-14: 00 123456 00721 5
or Case
GTIN -14: 1 0 123456 00001 5
Pallet of 4 cases of Widget X
GTIN-14: 3 0 123456 00001 9
Note:
 If a GTIN-14 begins with a zero, the number is actually one of the other, shorter GTIN data structures.
 The actual GTIN type may be determined by the number of leading zeros on a GTIN-14.
7

 Technically, the UCC’s Sunrise 2005 states that all North
American retailers should be able to handle the EAN by
January 1, 2005
 However, while making changes to systems and hardware, should go all the way to 14-digits for the GTIN
 Technically, no “sunrise date” for supporting the GTIN-14 has been issued
Note: The consumer level unit will always be marked with the UPC or
EAN symbology. Although the number may be stored in a database or transmitted in EDI in a 14-digit GTIN format, the consumer unit will always be marked with the applicable UPC or EAN format. In general,
POS hardware and software will not need to be modified to support the
GTIN-14 format.
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
8

Global Trade Item Numbers include:
 Existing
– UPC (UCC-12)
– EAN (EAN/UCC-13)
– EAN/UCC-8
– SCC-14 (ITF-14)
 New (2005 Sunrise)
– GTIN-14 (EAN/UCC-14)
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
14-digit format for database storage:
00 123456789012
0 1234567890123
000000 12345678
12345678901234
12345678901234
9

 An “item” is represented by a UPC/EAN/GTIN
 An individual copy of an item, is an “instance” of that item
 To identify individual “instances” of an item, they need to be serialized – each instance gets assigned its own serial number
 Necessary for RFID to work – if RFID only had the UPC imbedded, how could the RFID receiver identify whether there were 1,000 instances of an item, or whether it just heard the same one item 1,000 times?
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
10

 Over 60 years old – used by the British in WWII to identify their aircraft
 More recently, has been used to track:
– Soldiers in war zones
– Patients in hospitals
– Airfreight parcels
– Toll roads & bridges (FasTrack San Francisco, E-ZPass New York, etc.)
 RFID is radio versus UPC/Barcode which is optical – can process items in bulk rather than scanning each individually
 Cost
 Volume of data
 Competing standards
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
11



Header
8 bit
 GTIN – Global Trade Item Number
Format supports EAN-8, UPC-12, EAN-13 and Case-GTIN-14. Used to identify an item.
 EPC – Electronic Product Code
Is a GTIN with a serial number (or SGTIN) plus some additional data attributes. Used to identify an “instance” of an item.
 RFID – Radio Frequency Identification
A radio transmitter chip attached to items for identification purposes.
Chip is programmed with the EPC.
 Format of a 96-Bit EPC/RFID:
Filter
Value
3 bit
Partition
3 bit
EPC Manager #
(UPC Block/Co Prefix)
20-40 bits
GTIN
Object Class
(Item Reference)
24-4 bits
Serial #
38 bit
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
12

Vendors
     
QRS
Catalogue
Retailers
  
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
13

Vendors
Current UCCnet
          
Source
Datapools
Global
Registry
Recipient
Datapools
Retailers
QRS
Catalogue
Other
Catalogue
Other
Catalogue
UCCnet
Physically load 35-160 attributes per item
Other
Catalogue
       
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
14

Vendors
Current UCCnet
          
New UCCnet (8/04)
         
Source
Datapools
Global
Registry
Recipient
Datapools
Retailers
QRS
Catalogue
Other
Catalogue
Other
Catalogue
UCCnet
QRS
Catalogue
Physically load 35-160 attributes per item
Only register 8 reference attributes
UCC
GDSN
Other
Catalogue
Other
Catalogue
       
UCCnet
Other
Catalogue
         
15 © Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com

 First, have to know item data
 Then, could move item data in Ship Notice (ASN)
 Or, could wait until the actual individual items are received and simply “read/hear” them then (but could not query on their status until received)
 Or, have a “global router” to direct you to individual
“instance” databases
 The last alternative is what is being promoted by the UCC, and their affiliate EPCglobal
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
16

A completely separate network from the
UCCnet/Global Data
Synchronization
Network, which is for “item” data.
The UCC’s
EPCglobal network is for finding databases that have information on specific
“instances” of an item.
        
Local
Router
Local
Router
EPC global
Local
Router
Local
Router
        
Item data includes things such as:
• Product/Model #
• GTIN
• Size
• Color
• Flavor
Instance data includes things such as:
• Date of manufacture
• Lot
• Expiration date
•
Country of origin
•
Expiration date
•
Highest temperature reached
•
How long in a particular warehouse
17 © Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com

Why do we need an “instance” data network?
 We don’t
 Unless we want…
– Refrigerators that tell you when you have a carton of milk about to expire
– You want a washing machine to set the cycle and temperature automatically based on the contents
–
You want to know if an individual item has a safety recall
 Net is, it is a necessary foundation for future applications
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
18

 Wal-Mart top 100 vendor piloting on cases/pallets
–
Driving standards and solutions
–
Forrester estimates at a cost of $9M per vendor per year
 Standards will evolve and chip prices will come down
 Privacy issues to be resolved
 What is “real” business benefit?
 Many years off before RFID at product level for average consumer goods – will probably be earlier adoption in high ticket goods, that are already serialized, such as cars, appliances, consumer electronics, etc.
 Have to effectively manage item data before moving to instance data and RFID
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
19

For more information –
 Web:
 Phone:
 E-mail: www.qrs.com
800.UPC.TALK (800.872.8255)
Sales sales@qrs.com
Support
Careers cshelp@qrs.com
careers@qrs.com
Alliances alliances@qrs.com
 Richard Randall, QRS Business Advisor:
510-215-3765 rrandall@qrs.com
© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com
20