2005 Sunrise / GTIN

(The information contained in this Tech Note is based on a white paper published by PSC Inc., titled "Sunrise 2005 and PSC", dated of February 2003)

On June 9, 1997 the Uniform Code Council (UCC) announced some important changes in the AIDC standards for commerce in North America, to be implemented by January 1, 2005 ("2005 Sunrise"). In addition, the UCC and EAN International have defined a new term, Global Trade Item Number, or GTIN. These two changes will impact North American retailers and their suppliers, which is naturally causing some concern and uncertainty as to what actions are required to comply.

In an era where commerce is increasingly global, it is important that all trading partners accross the wprld use a single system of product identification standards. To harmonize practices in North America with the EAN-UCC system, the UCC has specified a few changes for all North American retailers, distributors, and manufacturers, and these changes must be fully implemented by January 1, 2005. This is the 2005 Sunrise initiative.

Although there are a lot of details to consider, the basic requirements of 2005 Sunrise can be stated in three key points:

Requirement 1: To allow products manufactured anywhere in the world to be sold in North America, all retail trading partners must be able to scan and process packages marked with EAN-13 and EAN-8 labels (as well as continue to process packages marked with UPC-A and UPC-E labels).

Requirement 2: Since the UCC is now (and EAN always has been) assigning variable-length Company Prefixes, sytems in use in North American trading partners must not assume that a fixed number of digits in the UPC or EAN barcode represents a specific company.

Requirement 3: Anticipating the adoption of new solutions for identifying variable-measure perishables and other products, it is strongly recommended (but not required) that all retail trading partners upgrade their sytems to process 14-digit item identification numbers (one of the four GTIN data structures).

Nothing more is required. And nothing else in the existing system of EAN-UCC standards is changing (The UPC barcode is neither changing nor going away).

GTIN - Global Trade Item Number

The Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is one of the fundamental building blocks of the EAN-UCC system of standards, used for the unique identification of trade items worldwide. There are four data structures in the EAN-UCC system that can be used to represent a GTIN, and each of these data structures can be encoded in several specific data carriers. A "data structure" is a logical grouping of information used, for example, to identify a trade item. A "data carrier" is a physical means of representing the information in a data structure.

Although is not required by the 2005 Sunrise initiative, the UCC recommends that the four GTIN data structures be stored in a common 14-digit GTIN format. This is achieved by right justifying the data in a 14-digit field and filling any empty positions with zeros. When transmiting trade item numbers between trading partners, the full 14-digit GTIN format should be utilized. Of course, it will be necessary to verify with your trading partners that they are prepared to accept the 14-digit format.