The Institute of Logistics and Warehousing (ILiM) – the national GS1 organization GS1 Poland is the only local organization in Poland authorized to admit companies and institutions from Poland into the GS1 system and to assign them GS1 numbers encoded in barcodes, including EAN-8 and EAN-13. These codes are currently placed on almost every product package sold in retail. The efficiency of automatic identification systems in retail chain stores depends on their quality, which is why constant supervision of this quality is essential. The statutory task of the national GS1 Poland organization is to supervise compliance with international GS1 specifications regarding the correct marking of goods with GS1 barcodes. In this regard, the Institute of Logistics and Warehousing has been running a cooperation program with retail chains for many years to improve barcode quality. As part of this program, free quality and accuracy tests of codes in retail chains are conducted, among other activities. The primary goal of these tests is to eliminate codes that are of poor quality, i.e., inconsistent with the applicable standard PN-ISO/IEC 15420:2006 (this standard replaced the PN-EN 797+AC: 1997 standard) and the “GS1 General Specifications”. Error elimination is carried out by checking the quality and accuracy of GS1 barcodes on packaging in trade circulation. For this purpose, Institute staff use devices called barcode verifiers (Figure 1), which allow for checking the quality parameters of the code and indicating elements requiring correction in case of irregularities.
Furthermore, the activities carried out under the program aim to identify manufacturers who illegally (without an agreement with ILiM) use GS1 barcodes with the 590 prefix (these are codes found on Polish goods). This identification is possible by comparing GTIN numbers found on Polish products with the GS1 system database, which includes companies participating in the GS1 system along with their assigned numbers. This prevents, among other things, the phenomenon of illegal use of other companies’ codes, which can lead to number duplication in retail chains. Many retail chains already participate in the cooperation program for barcode quality improvement, striving to eliminate incorrect codes and thereby aiming to improve customer service and increase the quality of services provided. In 2007, the following participated in this program: Castorama Polska, Makro Cash and Carry Polska, PSS “Społem” in Katowice, Spółdzielnia “Hale Banacha”, and Jeronimo Martins Dystrybucja Sp. z o.o.
Any retail chain that contacts ILiM can join the program. Participating chains receive reports from the tests conducted at their locations each time. In 2007, over 90% of the codes whose quality was questioned by ILiM during checks in retail chains were corrected. This contributes to shortening customer service time at the checkout counter. As a result, queues at checkouts are reduced, and time losses caused by the necessity of manual product number entry are significantly limited. The cooperation program with retail chains to improve code quality ultimately contributes to increased customer satisfaction and reduced financial losses for retail chains. As a result of research conducted by the Institute of Logistics and Warehousing, it was determined that the problem of complete failure to read barcodes by scanners due to poor code quality affects over 2% of codes on product packaging sold in retail. Based on the aforementioned data, it was calculated that time losses resulting from the complete failure to read a code and the necessity for a cashier to enter the number manually amount to an average of approximately 4.1% in retail chains in Poland. At first glance, this seems small, but on the scale of an entire retail chain, it is a significant value; for example, assuming that in just one retail chain store there are 10 cashiers working on two 8-hour shifts, they work 4,800 man-hours per month. Time losses due to the failure to read a code would amount to approximately 197 man-hours in this case. It is enough to multiply this last number by the value of a man-hour to determine these losses in PLN.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 2/2008.