Materials handling and logistics: The bar code symbol turns 35 today
Happy birthday to the Universal Product Code, one of the most recognized symbols in the world.
Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/3/2009
1974 – President Gerald Ford was in the White House, Johnny Rutherford won the Indy 500, "Godfather, Part II" received the Best Picture Oscar, and on June 3, the Universal Product Code bar code symbol was born. The 35th anniversary of the Universal Product Code (U.P.C.) bar code will be celebrated today by GS1 US, the developer and administrator of the U.P.C. for more than 200,000 businesses in the United States.
The organization will mark the event with a giant U.P.C. bar-coded birthday cake for more than 800 attendees at its annual U Connect Conference in Orlando.
One of the world’s best-known symbols, the U.P.C. comprises a row of 59 machine-readable black and white bars and 12 human-readable digits. Both the bars and the digits convey the same information: the identity of a specific product and its manufacturer.
Originally developed to help supermarkets speed up the checkout process, the first live use of a U.P.C. took place in a Marsh Supermarkets store in Troy, Ohio, on June 26, 1974, when a cashier scanned a package of Wrigley’s gum. It ushered in extraordinary economic and productivity gains for shoppers, retailers and manufacturers alike, with estimated annual cost savings of $17 billion in the grocery sector alone, according to one study.
Replacing individual price-labeling with the U.P.C. resulted in faster, more accurate checkouts, saving consumers time and money. Shelves were replenished more quickly, and stores were able to increase the frequency and variety of sales incentives. It also simplified product returns and rebates.
The U.P.C. was quickly adopted by other industries looking to capture the benefits it delivered to the grocery industry. Today, U.P.C.s are scanned more than 10 billion times a day in applications spanning more than 25 industries, including consumer packaged goods, apparel, hardware, food services, healthcare, logistics, government and high-tech.
“The U.P.C. made the modern retail store possible,” says Rodney McMullen, vice chairman of The Kroger Co., which operates more than 4,000 stores in different formats and under different banners, or names. “It allows us to carry tens of thousands of items in a given store and move shoppers through quickly while offering them many different ways to save money.”
Integral to the U.P.C.’s success are its flexibility – usable on myriad surfaces – and the foresight of the people who decided to design it with the capacity to identify millions of unique items. Although the range of its use today was not envisioned in 1974, when supermarkets carried a fraction of the inventory they carry today, the U.P.C. nevertheless accommodates the creation each year of tens of thousands of new products.
"Industry would not be as efficient without the U.P.C," says Sandy Douglas, president of Coca-Cola North America, and chairman of the GS1 US Board of Governors. “The U.P.C. provides a basis for the industry to track products from production to shelf, to move products between companies, and to get products to shoppers quickly.”
The U.P.C. is equally important to small entrepreneurs, who sell their products through large retailers, which require the bar code for both sales and recall purposes.
Every U.P.C. incorporates three elements: the brand owner’s GS1 company prefix, the specific item’s reference number, and a check digit, which is calculated by the combination of the preceding numbers and ensures data accuracy.
Contrary to one popular myth, the U.P.C. does not contain a product’s country of origin. But the U.P.C. is one manifestation of the Global Trade Item Number, a foundational aspect of the GS1 System that enables consistent, standard identification of products and other items in the supply chain globally.
“The U.P.C. really is fundamental to commerce,” says Bob Carpenter, chief executive officer of GS1 US. “It took time to build momentum, but it has succeeded because it benefits everyone: consumers, retailers, and manufacturers. And it has a lot of life left in it.”
U.P.C. timeline
1974: First live scan of a U.P.C. bar code; numbering system administered by Uniform Product Code Council (UPCC)
1978: Two-person office in Dayton, Ohio, was established to assign U.P.C. prefixes to companies
1980: 10,000th U.P.C. Company Prefix issued
1983: UPCC adds Electronic Data Interchange standard to its portfolio
1984: Name shortened to Uniform Code Council (UCC)
1985: Introduction of U.P.C.s for use on coupons
1989: Introduction of first standard for shipping containers
1992: 100,000th U.P.C. Company Prefix issued
1997: 200,000th U.P.C. Company Prefix issued
1998: Introduction of global data synchronization and UCCnet Data Pool
2001: First U Connect Conference is held
2002: Acquisition of RosettaNet
2003: Formation of EPCglobal
2003: Appointed Manager of United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC)
2003: 300,000th U.P.C. Company Prefix issued
2005: GS1 US is created when UCC and EAN combine standards groups to form GS1; as part of GS1 family, GS1 US supports adoption and implementation of GS1 standards and provides services to subscribers
2005: UCCnet combines with Transora to form 1SYNC Data Pool
2008: Formation of GS1 Healthcare US
2009: GS1 US-supported FMI Product Recall Portal goes live
The Future…
2010: Sunrise dates for GS1 DataBar on loose produce and coupons in U.S.
retail and GS1 Global Location Numbers in U.S. healthcare
2012: Sunrise date for GS1 Global Trade Item Numbers in U.S. healthcare
Innovations in product identification
The U.P.C.’s success has inspired the creation of new ways to identify products for the benefit of consumers and industry:
- The newest bar code, GS1 DataBar, can be found increasingly on coupons and loose produce. On Jan. 1, 2010, its "sunrise date," supermarkets will begin scanning and processing the GS1 DataBar, which can be configured in different formats to fit a smaller space or carry additional information, such as "best before" or expiration dates or lot numbers.
- GS1 Data Matrix, a bar code that resembles a random-patterned checkerboard, holds large amounts of data in a relatively small space as compared to traditional linear barcodes, and is becoming increasingly popular for a wide range of applications including aerospace, pharmaceutical and medical-device manufacturing.
- The Electronic Product Code (EPC) carries information similar to that within a bar code, but is read by RFID technology without a direct sight line, rather than being scanned. The EPC also can carry and transmit additional information. In the retail environment, EPC can enable a checkout process that is nearly instantaneous.
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