CHALLENGES
GS1-128 barcodes have been options
available to the retail grocery and
foodservice sector for many years…
with limited uptake. However,
building momentum in North America
and Europe for the adoption of
GS1-128 barcodes as the ubiquitous
standard within retail and food
service packaging is well on the way.
Increased interest in traceability and
supply chain optimisation, as well as
advances in technology, are driving
a notable shift in favour of GS1-128
barcodes.
But the road could be challenging.
There are particularly rigorous
standards to meet when compared
to the more familiar ITF-14 barcodes,
and manufacturers need to not only
make many decisions about what
data they want to encode, but also
exactly how it needs to be printed
to suit their inventory management
needs.
Global standards to facilitate business
communication have been under
development since the 1970s, with
the US and Europe leading the way.
A key enabler has been the barcode,
a symbol printed on products that
helps expedite product movement
from where they are manufactured
to where they will be used. Barcodes
allow items to be scanned quickly and
easily at various stages.
Known by various names across its
history, GS1 was selected in 2005
as the name for the global standards
organisation looking after barcodes,
among other responsibilities. In the
early days the priority for barcodes
was to help speed up logistics
between manufacturers and their
customers. There was also an interest
in knowing what was being sold to
whom and accelerating throughput
at the point of sale. Since the turn of
the millennium, the focus shifted to
using barcodes to expand visibility
at all levels. Doing customer-specific
promotions became more popular so
companies needed to know who was
buying what at a very granular level.
Additionally, there was greater
interest in splitting pallets to optimise
deliveries and cost while maximising
revenues, based on having more
detailed supply and demand
information available. Here, logistics
automation has helped accelerate
operations and made it easier to
address the rise of online shopping
and customer self-service needs.
Being able to perform recalls quickly
BARCODE
Are GS1-128 barcodes on track to become the most adopted standard for retail grocery
and food service packaging worldwide? A white paper recently released by Markem-Imaje
Americas engineering manager Steven Steen says yes.
50 MAY 2018