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Longer Bar Codes Coming in 2005
D_Fresh writes "The same thing that's happening to phone numbers is also happening in retail. The NYT (blahfreeregnotreallyblah) has a story about longer bar codes which will be required for U.S. retailers by 2005. Apparently they're running out of 12-digit codes and need to add a digit, but the code rework for this is non-trivial. Some shortsighted chains *cough*Kmart*cough* may be caught with their pants down in late 2004, since some scanners will simply crash if they scan a 13-digit code they can't handle. Enjoy your :CueCats while they last..."
Bigger Bar Code Inches Up on Retailers
By KATE MURPHY
In a little more than two years, retailers in the United States and Canada will face a deadline that promises technological challenges akin to the Year 2000 computer problem.
Starting Jan. 1, 2005, the 12-digit bar codes retailers use to identify everything from cars to candy bars will go to 13 digits. The additional number (and associated bars and spaces) is enough to make checkout scanners seize up and make computers crash, perhaps disrupting entire supply chains.
But many retailers have yet to focus on a problem that will require significant investments in time and capital.
"Most retailers are public companies that tend to live quarterly and not look ahead, which means they are going to be hit over the head with this and have to scramble at the last minute to avert disaster," said Thomas Friedman, president of Retail Systems Research Services, a company in Newton, Mass., that publishes a retail information technology newsletter.
Leading retailers say they have begun to address the issue. A spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores, the world's largest retailer, said the company had "embraced the concept" of an expanded bar code, but he did not respond to questions about actual measures taken to prepare computer databases and logistical systems. Similarly, a spokesman for the Target Corporation said his company was "intellectually ready" for the change but refused to comment on whether any of its stores or warehouses were technologically ready.
But Richard A. Galanti, the chief financial officer of Costco Wholesale, admitted, "The truth is, given the timeline, everybody's still in the assessment phase, trying to figure out what to do."
The difficulty is similar to the one posed by the Year 2000 computer problem, when computer software had to be switched from two-digit entries identifying years to four-digit entries. Before Jan. 1, 2000, millions of lines of code had to be rewritten to avoid widespread computer failures.
Bar codes have been used in packaging since 1974, when the first item, a pack of chewing gum, was scanned at a supermarket in Ohio. The codes identify a product, distinguishing between an eight-ounce can of Del Monte creamed corn and a medium-size pair of Hanes boxer shorts. When a bar code is scanned, the information in the store's database lets the retailer assign a price and track sales and inventory.
"The bar code is the linchpin upon which everything in retail depends," Mr. Friedman said.
The reason for expanding the 12-digit bar code, known as the Universal Product Code, is twofold. First, there is a shortage of U.P.C. numbers. "There's only a certain amount of 12-digit numbers, and we're going to run out," said John Terwilliger, vice president of global markets at the Universal Code Council, a nonprofit organization based in Lawrenceville, N.J., that assigns codes in the United States and Canada. Second, 13-digit bar codes are used almost everywhere else in the world. The council's European counterpart, EAN International, based in Brussels, assigns these numbers, called European Article Numbers, to companies in 99 nations. "Right now," Mr. Terwilliger said, "foreign importers have to get a 12-digit U.P.C. to do business over here, which they haven't been too happy about."
Foreign manufacturers currently pass on to consumers the cost of getting an additional bar code and creating special labels for products sold in the United States and Canada. "It's an added expense for them, and they have to recoup it somewhere," said Debra Shimkus, marketing manager at the Chicago Importing Company, a specialty food importer whose overseas suppliers are often incredulous when they are told they have to get new bar codes for their products before they can be sold in American groceries.
Many foreign manufacturers decide that it is not worth the trouble. "A lot of companies have been unwilling to accept the additional burden," Mr. Terwilliger said, "and have stayed out of the market entirely."
American and Canadian exporters have not had the same obstacle because foreign retailers can easily incorporate a 12-digit number into their 13-digit databases by making the first digit zero. That is why American and Canadian manufacturers of products that now have 12-digit codes will not be affected by the code expansion. A two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, for example, will keep the same U.P.C., but a zero will be added to the beginning of its bar-code number in retailers' product databases.
"The effect of the change in the U.P.C. code falls squarely on retailers," said Mr. Friedman. He estimates that the upgrade will cost at least $2 million for a chain of 100 stores with 10 checkout lanes a store.
The expense will vary depending on the age of a retailer's databases, software and hardware and whether it has to hire outside consultants to make the change. Scanners and other hardware bought more than three years ago will not read longer codes and will have to be replaced. Software more than five years old will also have to be scrapped.
"Thank God we'd already planned to buy new equipment for a lot of stores this year," said Richard S. Gilbert, director of store systems at Duane Reade, a chain of 200 drugstores in New York City. The stores have a total of 3,500 scanning devices, each costing $1,000 to $2,500. As for the cumbersome database modifications that need to be made, Mr. Gilbert said: "Our consultants say they are working on it, but they haven't gotten back to me with a plan. I still don't know how big a deal it's all going to be."
He might want to ask John Poss. Mr. Poss is the merchandising coordinator for Ace Hardware, which has 5,100 stores and sells some 65,000 coded products. Ace overhauled its computer systems to accept longer bar codes in 1999. The company, based in Oak Brook, Ill., has retail outlets in 70 countries and more than a hundred foreign suppliers.
"It was such a struggle to get manufacturers to relabel things for North America," Mr. Poss said, "and we wanted the same system in place globally, so we decided to make the change."
The company hired a consultant, Cognizant Technology Solutions, which is based in Teaneck, N.J., and is a division of Dun & Bradstreet. Ace's in-house team worked on the project during the day while a Cognizant office in India took over at night.
Even so, the project took almost two years to plan and carry out. In addition to equipment upgrades, modifications had to be made in more than 500 software programs in various company divisions (50 in distribution alone). The most tedious and time-consuming part of the conversion, Mr. Poss said, was making adjustments to databases. "Every database in every division touches bar code information, and they all needed to be reworked," he said. "It's like Y2K, where you had to go in and expand fields and find every reference to the date."
Though Mr. Poss would not disclose the cost of the project, he said the gains in efficiency and in suppliers' good will had been "well worth the expense." His advice to other retailers is to "get busy because you're facing an extreme challenge."
But moving to 13 digits may not be enough. The Universal Code Council and EAN International, which formed an alliance in 1996, strongly advise manufacturers and retailers to go a step further and prepare their systems to accommodate a 14-digit code. That is the length of a newly patented bar code that takes up less space. Its reduced size means that it can be affixed to small items like loose produce, and the extra digits let a retailer keep track of additional data like batch and lot numbers.
That additional information would make product recalls easier. "Today," Mr. Terwilliger said, "once a product is taken out of the shipping container in the warehouse, you really can't track it anymore."
Shipping container bar codes are already 14 digits. The different bar-code standards mean that retailers need different computer systems for shipping and receiving, inventory and sales. By adopting a 14-digit standard, retailers should be able to put all the information into a single database.
Mr. Poss said Ace had added the capacity to scan and store 14 digits when it made its conversion three years ago. "Now we can scan anything," he said, "whether it's in the warehouse or at the register, and it immediately goes in to a centralized system. No more sending data between divisions."
The cost and work of making the transition to 14 digits, he said, was the same as it would have been for a change to 13 digits.
Representatives from the standards groups said adopting a 14-digit structure -- a step for which no date has been set -- could help streamline the sharing of data among all parts of a retail operation. It would also make it possible, they said, to identify products anywhere in the world at any time during the trade process.
"And to think it all started with pack of gum," Mr. Poss said.
Offical website:
http://www.uc-council.org/2005sunrise/
Quoting:
On January 1, 2005, the EAN.UCC System will open up a whole new era of global supply chain efficiency. Up until this date, the potential of the EAN.UCC System that is used today all around the world has never been fully realized. This is because products coming in to the U.S. and Canada that are typically identified with data structures other than the 12 digit U.P.C. cannot be stored in databases of North American companies. As of this monumental sunrise date, gone will be the inefficiencies that have come with North American databases that could only accept a 12 digit U.P.C.
This family of data structures is known as the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN). If your company's database is built on anything less than 14 digits, you should be making important changes. This 2005 Sunrise kit is here to help you. It will cover the following information:
GTIN Definition
GTIN family of data structures
Explanation of how these changes affect North American
Databases
A sample letter you can use to notify your systems/service providers
UCC Company Prefix assignment changes and updates related to January 1, 2005
Resources for further information
You Don't Have to Wait till 2005!
As soon as you change your databases, your company will be equipped to handle a greater range of global products. The good news is you don't have to wait until 2005 to reap these benefits. If you plan and implement now, your company can immediately take advantage of this powerful global commerce tool.
first a barcode is 12 digits, however the first and last digit are control digits and are not used to identify the product, but to check if the code is plausable.
second europe/asia uses 13digit upc's
as far as i know, there are private class upc ranges, someone metioned starting with 0000, at work we use 8888 so perhaps 0000-9999 is a private range..
this is how i thin kit is, i could be flat out wrong..
Some shortsighted chains *cough*Kmart*cough* may be caught with their pants down in late 2004
I used to work in Kmart. Our IBM Type III registers say the following when you scan an invalid barcode - "ERR: Must be between 8-13 digits". With a message like that, once can presume that the registers *are* capable of scanning the 13 digit UPCs...and that it's a back-end (IE - Receiving, distribution, inventory) change that's needed.
Considering that I've not seen a Kmart that *wasn't* using these old Type III's, I hardly say that Kmart is getting caught "with their pants down". They're further along the transition than some other companies that have *no* 13-digit capable equipment.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Format is:
The reason they're not going to 14+ digits is they're really just becomming compatable with the rest of the world, which uses 13 digits, and hoping to steal some unallocated number ranges in there (shades of IP Addresses.) Going to 14+ would be a worldwide change, which is, obviously, somewhat harder to accomplish.
Yes, most books already have 13-digit EAN barcodes, with 978 assigned as the "Country code" for the ISBN namespace (the country name is Bookland).
Any bar code scanner sold in the last decade (at least) will decode not only UPC and EAN, but several other symbologies, including ones that include letters. There are single chips (from HP, e.g.) that take the analog input from a light measuring device and do everything for you.
There's good information about UPCs and EANs at http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/upccode.html
Some mass-market paperbacks have UPCs instead of EANs.
Formats like the Aztec code can hold up to 3000 characters of information. Rather than re-engineer something inefficient (UPC), why not adapt something new and completely extinguish the problem?
Info on barcodes, UPC symbols, maxicode, etc.
I believe you're referring to 2D barcode, which instead of using the width of the bars, use the height as well, giving approximately the square of the amount of info that a 1D bar code occupying the same space would provide.. pdf
See
http://www.aurorabarcode.com/PDF/2D%20Bar%20Codes
for more info.
Not that simple. On the 12 digit barcode, as far as UPC's are concerned, you only have 10 usable digits, and even then, for reatil applications, there are strict allocation guidlines.
UCC Reference
Digit 1: Code, UCC Prefix.
Digits 2-6: Company Number
Digits 7-11: Item Reference
Digit 12: Check
Thus, you only have 10 useable digits for identifying products, and only 100,000 different companies to dole out 100,000 UPC's, (multiply by 3 because the first digit is 0, 6, or 7 for standard products.) That's 3.0 * 10^10 combinations. However, like IP addresses, these are handed out in inefficient methods, because they go in blocks of 100,000. Which means you need to pay somebody some money to get ahold of one.
This is a common problem for aspiring independent artists who want to get their music out. They get to make a choice... do I pay someone for a UPC, or do I go without? Stores generally won't accept a CD for sale w/o a UPC code on it. (Barring local merchants who may be willing to stock the item and either just put a price tag on it, or use one of their own UPC's. (UPC's beginning with 4 are reserved for such "internal applications". If your grocery store has a bulk foods department, and prints out UPC codes from a scale, the code will probably begin with 4.)
And the UCC is the body responsible for handing out the company codes.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
UPC does not code 39, aka code 3 of 9.
IIRC, UPC uses Interleaved 2 of 5. (Could be wrong on this, but definitely not code 39.) That is how they pack so many digits into so few bars. Try this experiment. Hold up a can of Diet Coke. Look at barcode. Print out a barcode for the same upc digits in Code 39. See how horrifically freakin long it is? A bar code that long is very difficult to scan. (A very skilled operator can manage to scan this long of a code in Code 39 -- believe me.)
Code 39 has an advantage that each digit is made up of one set of bars, and thus you can make a font for the code. Additionally, code 39 can represent not just digits, bue also letters and some symbols.
You can't make up a font for UPC (as seen on a can of Diet Coke and other grocery store products) because the widths of three black bars make up a digit, and then the widths of the two white "spaces" between the bars make up another digit.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I don't know that this is entirely true. Check out the bar codes at the supermarket-- there are two sets of numbers (plus a check digit). The first set of numbers (I believe it's five digits) will be the same for every product by a given manufacturer. The box of Kraft Mac & Cheese will have the same first five digits as the package of Kraft salad dressing. The second set of digits identifies the particular product and size of that manufacturer.
Thus, as with phone numbers or SSN's, there is a sub-optimal distribution of the finite number of codes. Let's assume Kraft's five digits are 12345. If Kraft has less than 1,00,000 products (assuming the second set of numbers is six digits), some of the set of numbers in 12345XXXXXX are going to be unused. However, because the 12345 is a unique identifier for Kraft, those unused numbers cannot be apportioned to another manufacturer.
Then again, I could be wrong. I shop where they still put price stickers on the cans.
From my years as a book jockey I can tell you a few things about ISBN's.
1. ISBN's almost always start with zero or one, although that's changing as more companies get into the game. Texkbooks and reference books usually start with 9, for example.
2. The first 5 digits id the top level manufacturer. This was handy because imprints that were owned by another company still had the first 5 digits of their parent company's code - pocket books, for instance, is owned by simon and schuster.(although many pub's had more than one manufacturer code).
3. The second 5 digits are a product code.
4. The last two digits are a checksum to make sure the ISBN is valid. There's a formula something like "add the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th digits and divide by the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th digits. the checksum is the remainder." I don't know exactly what the formula is, but I'm dying to know, it's been bugging me for years.
Fun fact: Hardcover, trade paper and Mass Market editions of the same book have different ISBNs, but different editions/printings of the same book usually have the same isbn. While conserving available codes, it's quite annoying when someone's looking for a specific edition.
Triv
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M0571y H@rml355.
Why don't we set the WayBack machine to 1971 and take a look at the computers you're asking this of? I've got a memory card from a 1970's era Unitote SLCC hanging on the wall in front of me. It has a whopping 16K of hand-wound magnetic cores, and is the size of a spiral-bound notebook. This card was from the controller for the whole store. The CPU consisted of several wire-wrapped circuit boards populated with discrete 74xx series chips. The power supply was bigger than my 17" monitor. The cash registers had 1K of RAM.
This was an era when the extra two digits representing the century would have meant two less columns on an 80 column punch card. That little insight saved them 3% of their total storage costs.
And now let's print those barcodes on our products. What, no laser printed master copies? I have to hire a separate company just to prepare the master films for my barcode.
I'm guessing that the UCC probably even considered that 12 digit UPCs would reach their end-of-life in 20 or 30 years. They also probably knew that by then we surely would have better equipment.
I'm amazed at the forethought and insight that went into designing a system that fit on the equipment of the day and withstood 31 years of use.
John