Longer Bar Codes Coming in 2005

Posted by michael on Tuesday August 13, 2002 @04:57AM from the beep-beep dept.

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..."

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Re:13? Why not more? by Plutor · 2002-08-13 05:29 · Score: 0, Redundant

RTFA. The rest of the world is currently using 13-digit UPCs, and this change is more to satisfy manufacturer complaints than opening up more address space, IMO.

14-digit codes like the RSS code are currently being used on shipping crates and so forth, and the article says that some companies are actually going to use those 14-digit codes in order to consolidate their databases. A good idea.