U.S. retailers must add one digit to bar codes
The Uniform Code Council, the North American arbiter of shipping bar codes, has told retailers in the United States and Canada that all of their bar-code scanners will have to read 13-digit codes by January.
The 30-year-old American Universal Product Code used in the United States and Canada has 12 digits. The European Article Numbering Code has 13 digits. Most countries use 13 digits, 'which has become the global standard,' said Ray Tromba, an analyst with IBM Global Services.
American retailers have begun retooling software programs to conform to the 13-digit standard. Current 12-digit bar codes will not have to be replaced. Systems that can scan 13-digit codes can also read 12-digit codes.
More than five billion bar-coded products are scanned worldwide every day. A bar code consists of a string of digits, one group to identify a product's manufacturer, another group to identify the product, and one so-called 'check digit' for automated error checking.
The technology's standards organizations, EAN International, in Brussels, and the Uniform Code Council, in Lawrenceville, N.J., will merge next year into one group, to be called GSI and based in Brussels.