Automatic Data Capture (ADC) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems are the fundamental tools of the electronic economy. Their implementation improves the management of any company and its relationships with suppliers and customers. Unfortunately, in the initial implementations of ADC and EDI systems, companies often use internal solutions, which are useless in supply chain logistics.
Over time, companies and institutions, either on their own or motivated by customers, switch to using the global, and therefore international and cross-industry, GS1 system, and the more aware ones implement it right from the start. Using GS1 standards and solutions for ADC and EDI can bring benefits to all participants in the supply chain. However, to achieve the expected results, several tasks must be completed. One of them is the appropriate labeling of goods and their packaging with barcodes, according to the function each of them performs in the supply chain. Based on a quarter-century of experience, as well as the results of research and consultations conducted during that time, and taking into account expert assessments, significant problems occurring at the interface between supplier and customer during the implementation of automatic identification systems via barcodes have been identified. Some of the frequently occurring problems, the resolution of which is essential for the effective implementation of ADC systems that improve logistics both domestically and abroad, include the transition from so-called production units to trade units and the determination of the function that a given product in a specific packaging form performs in the supply chain. The justification for the necessity of transitioning from production units to trade units, as well as the definition and systematization of trade units encountered in business practice for the purpose of their proper labeling for ADC needs, in accordance with GS1 principles and identified market needs, is the result of the aforementioned work and the subject of this article.
Basic objects coded for ADC needs
Objects to be labeled with barcodes are primarily: trade units, including stocks/resources, logistics units, and locations, where:
– trade units are all products that one company offers to another, some of which are fixed assets, and others are, for example, raw materials purchased and issued for consumption in production and/or products as finished goods intended for sale, in various packaging forms (unit or collective packaging, retail or non-retail/wholesale (for example, a bag with 20 kg of sugar), with homogeneous or diverse but standard content (for example, a fixed set, kit), with a fixed or variable quantity in the packaging (for example, chickens on trays), or without packaging;
– logistics units (also called: transport, shipping, or load units), which are any combinations of trade units created for storage or transport purposes, in order to identify and track these units in the supply chain. These are therefore units of any composition, including large-sized products (for example, a refrigerator on a pallet), created for transport and/or storage, which require management throughout the entire supply chain;
– locations, including: formal-legal (identification of companies and institutions and their branches) and physical locations, for example, storage places in a warehouse and shipment monitoring points.
Code labels are applied either directly (for example, on unit packaging and partially on intermediate/collective packaging) and on standard GS1 labels placed on logistics units.
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Source: Logistyka Magazine