Page 3 - Identification of hierarchical structured product data

- 5 - 1 Introduction In business processes between trading partners (i.e. B2B processes), the exchange of various information prior to, accompanying and following the physical flow of goods has become more and more important. This information may be exchanged electronically and/or via documents, labels and RFID tags. The information that is exchanged includes, but is not limited to, information about products, parties and locations. To efficiently handle these processes electronically, there is a need for unique identification of the different entities and data elements. This especially applies to product and party identification, as these are key data elements in trade, logistics and manufacturing processes. 1.1 Purpose The EDIFICE guideline for the Global Unique Identification scheme defines the entities, the structure and the syntax rules that have to be applied to create globally unique numbers for these entities. The method applied is based upon the International Standard ISO/IEC 15459 series for “Information Technology – Unique Identifiers” that specifies unique identifiers for supply chain management, such as transport units, (known as the License Plate number), serialised items, lot/batch numbers, returnable transport items or groupings of transport units. 1.2 Scope This guideline describes the structure and application for the unique identification of the following entities:  Companies  Organisational (sub-)units of companies  Locations (defined by companies)  Products  Returnable transport items  Serial numbers  Traceability (i.e. batch / lot ) numbers  Groupings of Transport Units Transport Units themselves are not addressed in this guideline. For details refer to the EDIFICE License Plate Guideline Issue 6. Unique Identification of Packaging is being addressed by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC31 WG2 and ISO TC122. This guideline will be updated accordingly as soon as these committees have published their recommendations. The definition of the hierarchical structure of unique identifiers is not addressed in this guideline. Because many of these data elements are shown on labels and are encoded in a 1D symbol or any kind of high capacity media (e.g. 2D symbol, RFID Tag), appropriate data identifiers have been defined. 1.3 Benefits In business practice a lot of different numbering schemes are frequently in use for identification of suppliers, customers, articles, locations, serial- and traceability numbers. GUI Issue 3 ©EDIFICE 29 August 2011