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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..."
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.
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.
Almost all wrong. Most of the ISBNs you've seen start with 0 or 1 because the first digit(s) identifies the language or country that the publisher of the book is in. 0 and 1 are English, 2 is French, 3 is German, 4 is Japan, 5 is USSR, 7 is China, and 8 and 9 are used for the rest of the world. If it's a really small country, then the first 5 digits could be country code, eg 99912 for Botswana. The second portion is the publisher, the third the book, and the last the checksum. With the expection of the checksum, these are all variable length, so for example 0-340-62839-1 indicates an english language book from a large publisher, while 1-56592-528-9 indicates another english language book from a smaller publisher. The checksum is 11-(sum(digit*(10-position))%11), so the the second ISBN is 1*10+5*9+6*8+5*7+9*6+2*5+5*4+2*3+8*2=244, 244%11 = 2, 11-2 = 9.
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