GS1

GS1, Global Standards,^[1] is a not-for-profit, international organization that develops and maintains standards for supply and demand chains across multiple sectors.

With local Member Organizations in over 110 countries,^[2] GS1 works with communities of trading partners, industry organizations, governments and technology providers and responds to their business needs through the adoption and implementation of global standards. The nature of GS1 Member Organisations varies by country. In some countries it acts as a simple "standards body", in others it operates with more commercial objectives, whilst still being incorporated as a "not for profit".

GS1 has over a million member companies across the world, executing more than five billion transactions daily using GS1 standards.^[3]

GS1 Logo

GS1 standards

Most companies initially come to GS1 to get a bar code number for their products. However, GS1 standards provide a much wider framework for supply chain visibility. The current architecture of GS1 standards is as follows:

• Identify: Standards for the identification of items, locations, shipments, assets, etc.. and associated data
• Capture: Standards for encoding and capturing data in physical data carriers such as barcodes and RFID tags
• Share: Standards for sharing data between parties

GS1 identification standards do not provide identification of country of origin for a given product. Member companies may manufacture products anywhere in the world.^[4]

Possible Conflicts of Interest

Membership of a given GS1 Member Organisation is often a requirement by retailers, in order to lease barcode numbers and supply retailers with product. This gives GS1 Member Organisations significant revenues from membership fees, which have to be renewed to maintain the leasing of the barcode numbers (GTIN's). In a number of countries, including Australia, GS1 uses these revenues to develop and subsidise the development of commercially oriented products that compete with those of its Alliance Partners and other commercial organisations, which do not have the benefits of revenue from forced membership. GS1 is also known to use retailers who sit on its board, to market these commercially oriented products to the retailers' vendors.

Given GS1 is a confederation of Member Organisation which each act independently, GS1 global can do little to stop such practices, without the support of local board members.

Links to other international standards organisations

GS1 partners with the following international standard bodies:

• ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. GS1 is approved to submit standards as Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) through the JTC1 PAS Transposition Process.^[5]
• ISO/IEC JTC 1, the Joint Technical Committee responsible for information and communication technology standards
• UN/CEFACT, the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business
• ITU-T, the International Telecommunications Union standardization sector

History

Key dates in GS1's history are as follows:^[6]

• 1973: Industry leaders in the United States select a single standard for product identification—the Universal Product Code symbol—over seven other options. Still in use today, the U.P.C. was the first GS1 barcode.
• 1974: The Uniform Code Council (UCC) is established in the United States as a not-for-profit standards organization
• 1974: A pack of Wrigley's gum becomes the first product to be scanned with a GS1 barcode in a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, United States.
• 1977: The European Article Numbering (EAN) Association is established as an international not-for-profit standards organization. With a head office in Brussels, Belgium, the EAN Association has 12 founding Member Organizations from European countries.
• 1990: The Uniform Code Council (UCC) and EAN International (EAN) sign a cooperative agreement formalizing their intent to co-manage global standards.
• 2005: A new name for the organization, GS1, is launched worldwide.

See also

• List of GS1 country codes
• Global Trade Item Number
• Global Document Type Identifier
• Global Location Number
• Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN)
• Global Electronic Party Information Register (GEPIR)
• Serial Shipping Container Code
• GS1 EDI
• EPCglobal: global standards for RFID object tags
• Global Product Classification GPC
• GS1 US maintainer of Universal Product Code (UPC numbers)

Notes and references

1. "How We Got Here". GS1.
2. "GS1 Annual Report". GS1. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
3. "About GS1". GS1. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
4. "Prefix list", BarCodes & Identification, GS1.
5. "Approved PAS Submitters". ISO. Retrieved 17 October 2015.
6. "Historic Timeline". GS1. Retrieved 17 October 2015.

External links

• Official website
• "Organization timeline", About, GS1.
• Annual Report (2013–2014) (PDF), GS1.