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

Evolution of Product Identification Standards:From UPC to GTIN to EPC to RFID

Richard RandallBusiness Advisor

July 13, 2004

Presented to:

© Richard Randall, QRS Corporation, 2004 // 800.872.8255 // www.qrs.com 2

Agenda

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


Who is QRS?

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


What’s new with QRS?

Since we last met…

Introduced two new Product Information Management (PIM) software solutions– QRS IMPACT™

– QRS QuickSync™

June 17th announcement

QRS to be acquired by JDA


History of the Barcode and the UPC

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.


Components of a UPC

Number System

CharacterManufacturer

Number Unique Item Reference Numberto Color/Size Level

5-2 digits

Mod-10Checkdigit

Company Prefix (Block ID)6-9 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.”


Pre-packUPC-12: 123456 00721 5GTIN-14: 00 123456 00721 5

GTIN-14 Usage

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 re-calculated 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

* “9” is reserved for variable weight/measure items

Widget X

Case of 12 Widget X’s

GTIN-14: 30 123456 00001 9

UPC-12: 123456 00001 8GTIN-14: 00 123456 00001 8

Pallet of 4 cases of Widget X

or CaseGTIN-14: 10 123456 00001 5

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.


Clarification on “Sunrise 2005” & GTIN

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.


The GTIN “Family”

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)

14-digit format for database storage:

00123456789012

01234567890123

00000012345678

12345678901234

12345678901234


“Item” Data vs. “Instance” Data

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?


RFID isn’t new

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.)

Benefit of RFID over UPC/Barcode RFID is radio versus UPC/Barcode which is optical – can

process items in bulk rather than scanning each individually

Then why hasn’t it caught on? Cost Volume of data Competing standards


Industry Direction: GTINEPCRFID

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:

Header8 bit

FilterValue

3 bit

Partition3 bit

EPC Manager #(UPC Block/Co Prefix)

20-40 bits

Object Class(Item Reference)

24-4 bits

Serial #38 bit

GTIN


How “move” item data?... Historically

QRSQRSCatalogueCatalogue

Vendors

Retailers


How “move” item data?... UCCnet


Vendors

Retailers

OtherOtherCatalogueCatalogue


UCCnetUCCnet


SourceDatapools

GlobalRegistry

RecipientDatapools

Physically load 35-160 attributes per item

Current UCCnet


How “move” item data?... UCCnet


Vendors

Retailers



UCCnetUCCnet


SourceDatapools

GlobalRegistry

RecipientDatapools

Current UCCnet New UCCnet (8/04)



UCCUCCGDSNGDSN

OtherOtherCatalogueCatalogueUCCnetUCCnet

Physically load 35-160 attributes per item

Only register 8 reference attributes


How move “instance” data?

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


How move “instance” data?... EPCglobal

LocalLocalRouterRouter


EPCEPCglobalglobal



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.

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


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


So, where are we with RFID?

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


Q & A

For more information – Web: www.qrs.com

Phone: 800.UPC.TALK (800.872.8255)

E-mail: Sales [email protected]

Support [email protected]

Careers [email protected]

Alliances [email protected]

Richard Randall, QRS Business Advisor:

510-215-3765 [email protected]

Thank you!

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

Documents

qrs corporation

th announcement qrs

upc current utilization

prepack upc

stride rite corporation

jda slide

industry standards

retail industry customers