BarCode 1

Description

The Universal Product Code or UPC barcode was the first bar code symbology widely adopted. Its birth is usually set at April 3, 1973, when the grocery industry formally established UPC as the standard bar code symbology for product marking. Foreign interest in UPC led to the adoption of the EAN code format, similar to UPC, in December 1976. 2005 Sunrise and the Global Trade Item Number initiatives from the UCC will begin on January 1, 2005. This is the "fourteen digit U.P.C." that everyone is talking about. There are quite a few misconceptions and considerable misinformation about the effect of this change. In a nutshell, if you are a manufacturer of a product that has an existing 8 or 12-digit UPC barcode, don't worry. You do not have to change anything. However, if you are a retailer or wholesaler with scanners, you potentially are affected. You will need to ensure that scanners are able to decode 8, 12, 13 and 14-digit barcodes (most scanners sold for the last 5 years can do this) and that database systems can handle the extra digits. Gregg London was kind enough to share an excellent white paper on the subject. Once January 1, 2005 comes, both EAN and UPC labels should scan properly worldwide. There are now five versions of UPC and two versions of EAN. The Japanese Article Numbering (JAN) code has a single version identical to one of the EAN versions with the flag characters set to ``49''. UPC and EAN symbols are fixed in length, can only encode numbers, and are continuous symbologies using four element widths. UPC version A symbols have 10 digits plus two overhead digits while EAN symbols have 12 digits and one overhead digit. The first overhead digit of a UPC version A symbol is a number related to the type of product while an EAN symbol uses the first two characters to designate the country of the EAN International organization issuing the number. UPC is in fact a subset of the more general EAN code. Scanners equipped to read EAN symbols can read UPC symbols as well. However, UPC scanners will not necessarily read EAN symbols. The UPC symbology was designed to make it ideal for coding products. UPC can be printed on packages using a variety of printing processes. The format allows the symbol to be scanned with any package orientation. Omnidirectional scanning allows any package orientation provided the symbol faces the scanner. The UPC format can be scanned by hand-held wands and can be printed by equipment in the store. Version A of the symbology has a First Pass Read Rate of 99% using a fixed laser scanner and has a substitution error rate of less than 1 error in 10,000 scanned symbols. Nominal X dimension is 13 mils. A magnification factor of 0.8 to 2.0 is allowed and, as a result, makes a printable range of X dimension values of 10.4 to 24 mils. In other words, the nominal size of a UPC symbol is 1.469" wide x 1.02" high. The minimum recommended size is 80% of the nominal size or 1.175" wide x .816" high. The maximum recommended size is 200% of the nominal size or 2.938" wide x 2.04" high. Larger UPC's scan better. Smaller UPC's do not scan as well or not at all.

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