Standards that Identify
Globally standardised, unique identifiers are at the heart of what we do – for products and locations.
These fuel our data sharing systems and traceability tools, giving you, your trading partners, and customers visibility to identify, track, trace, and manage products and locations at any point in time.
Uniquely identifying your products and locations using barcodes and location numbers, streamlines your business to work more effectively and efficiently across your supply chain and on a global scale.
Barcode numbers
Barcodes have two parts – the unique number and the graphic.
A barcode number (aka, a GTIN - Global Trade Item Number), is the globally unique number you assign to your product.
You’ll need unique barcode numbers for each product as well as the carton/case they come in, and your logistics units such as a pallet (now required by supermarket retailers). Find out more about logistics labelling using Serial Shipping Container codes.
Once you’ve assigned a barcode number to your product, it provides a common language that all your trading and supply chain partners can use both here and globally to uniquely identify the item and easily share its data.
Once you have your barcode number (GTIN), you’ll need to create a barcode graphic.
Trust
Your retailers and customers can trust what's on both the physical and digital shelf is authentic.
Traceability
Your products can be tracked and traced through the local and global supply chains easily and efficiently.
Truly global
GTINs are the global standard for identifying items and GS1 is the only authorised source for GTINs worldwide.
Global Location Numbers
A Global Location Number (GLN) is a globally unique identification number used to identify legal entities, physical, functional, and digital locations within an organisation.
An example of our Global Location Numbers in action are GLNs encoded in the Covid-19 posters we’re all scanning every day. And, within supply chains, GS1 barcodes and GLNs provide increased confidence and trust with enhanced product visibility and traceability every step of the way.
Trusted
GLNs build on an organisation’s New Zealand Business Number (NZBN - which is also a GS1 GLN), because they are used to identify specific parts of an organisation – physical, functional, and digital locations.
Flexible
Whether it’s a warehouse, operating theatre, or just a room in an office block, GLNs can identify any location.
Traceable
Use GLNs to identify where an item is or has been as it moves through a supply chain.
Truly global
Global Location Numbers are the global standard for unique location identification.
2D barcodes
GS1 2D barcodes offer many benefits because they can have significantly more product information that can be captured and encoded in them. 2D barcodes are commonly used for batch/lot number, serial number, best before date use-by-date and much more – and all in one, single (and small) barcode symbol.
As well as being scanned at the check-out, 2D barcodes can also be ‘web enabled’ for consumers to scan and be directed to your website.
