UPCs and EANs and GTINs, oh my!
In PartsHub, you can maintain separate GTINs at the item and package level if needed. However, since both UPCs and EANs imply packaging of a single item, often the same UPC/EAN number is found in both the Details and Package GTIN fields.
What are all the acronyms? They all refer to barcode standards.
UPC is the barcode standard for North America and conceived over 40 years ago. EAN is the European barcode standard. As the world has developed a global market with suppliers and resellers sourcing products from around the world, the two meet in the form of the GTIN, the global barcode standard maintained by GS1, a non-profit organization who developed the global standard for communication of product data.
The GTIN (global trading identification number) is a globally unique 14-digit number used to identify trade items, products, or services. GTIN is also an umbrella term that refers to the entire family of UCC.EAN data structures.
The GTIN is only a term and does not impact any existing standards, nor does it place any additional requirements on scanning hardware. For North American companies, the UPC is an existing form of the GTIN.
The family of data structures (not symbologies) comprising GTIN includes:
- GTIN-12 (UPC-A): this is a 12-digit number used primarily in North America
- GTIN-8 (EAN/UCC-8): this is an 8-digit number used predominately outside of North America
- GTIN-13 (EAN/UCC-13): this is a 13-digit number used predominately outside of North America
- GTIN-14 (EAN/UCC-14 or ITF-14): this is a 14-digit number used to identify trade items at various packaging levels
The full 14-digit GTIN is achieved on a data carrier of shorter length by ‘padding’ the number with left-justified zeros out to 14 digits.