The dynamics of conducting business have changed faster in the last few years than during the whole post world-war era. Rapid evolution of roles in the value chain, new channels of distribution, shifting demand patterns and increased service expectations have raised the critical importance of information technology in business processes.

The EAN•UCC standards facilitate national and international communication between all trading partners participating in any supply chain, including raw material suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, hospitals and final clients or consumers.

Many businesses are expanding their distribution channels towards markets and clients, which may not be traditional for them, in other sectors of industry. A business that chooses an industry-specific standard will face the potentially high costs of maintaining two systems if it wants to sell its products or services or simply communicate outside its "closed-world".

Many operations which are essential for the efficiency of trade and the optimisation of the supply chain depend on the accuracy of identification of the products exchanged, services rendered, and/or locations involved.

The EAN•UCC system is a set of standards enabling the efficient management of global, multi-industry supply chains by uniquely identifying products, shipping units, assets locations and services. It facilitates electronic commerce processes including full tracking and traceability.

The identification numbers can be represented in bar code symbols to enable electronic reading at point of sale, at receiving in warehouses, or at any other point where it is required in business processes. The system is designed to overcome the limitations of using company, organisation or sector specific coding systems, and to make trading much more efficient and more responsive to customers.

These identifying numbers are also used in electronic data interchange - EDI - messages to improve the speed and accuracy of communication. This manual only provides information about the numbering system, bar codes, and scanning. For information about EDI, please refer to the EANCOM? manual.

As well as providing unique identifying numbers, the system also provides for additional information such as best before dates, serial numbers, and batch numbers to be shown in a bar coded form.

Following the principles and design of the EAN•UCC system means that users can design applications to process EAN•UCC data automatically. The system logic guarantees that data captured from bar codes produces unambiguous electronic messages and processing of them can be fully pre-programmed.

The system is designed to be usable in any industry, trade or public sectors, and any changes to the system are introduced so that they do not disrupt current users.

The application of the different EAN•UCC standards can result in significant improvements in logistic operations, reduction of paperwork costs, shorter order and delivery lead times, increased accuracy and better management of the whole supply chain. Enormous costs savings are realised daily by user companies who have adopted the EAN•UCC system, because they apply the same solution for communicating with all their trading partners, while remaining entirely free to run internal applications at their own discretion