The GS1 standards are the specifications defined by the international non-profit association GS1, in order to implement global standards for product management.
In general, the scope of GS1 standards is to guarantee a “common language” to improve efficiency of supply and demand chains, working close with industry organizations and governments. This system — born in the US in the 70’s — is now spread worldwide: each day, more than 6 billion transactions are made using GS1 standards.
The most important mission of GS1 is to provide each company barcode numbers to identify their products unambiguously: an efficient way to encode and share retail information.
Each number and barcode are correlated and unique: the latter is simply the visual representation of the former, used to enable the electronic reading process and simplify data exchange. Of course, GS1 standards define also the design parameters for all barcodes.
Even though these standards are essentially used for retail, healthcare and logistics, they can cover also other sectors. All detailed information about GS1 standards can be found directly in the GS1 general specifications document.
And at last, an advice about printing GS1 barcodes. Once you have got your own GS1 numbers and codes, it’ll be necessary to print them with their related barcode to add them to your products. Among the good barcode printing software we suggest LabelJoy or LabelRight; they’re simple and effective.