GS1 and Blockchain, The key to change the traditional Supplychain (Part 1)

In the last year I started using GS1 standards for my business, we’re a startup about nutritious flour from vegetable. With the ambition of expand our business out aboard, we suddenly found that GS1 really changed the way we approached international shipments.

So, what is GS1?

The reason we had to do so was for traceability, and also conformity. You can imagine a warehouse taking in 100 trucks worth of product each day from all over the world; you would need a specific standard in place or otherwise you’d have a ridiculous amount of information all over the place and their ERP system would be a disaster. If one location has a standard for receiving goods, then it only makes sense that all locations use the same standard. It saves paperwork, time and money. Most importantly it means you can more easily follow goods if there’s a problem.

The ever burning question… what is GS1? Seeing as it’s mentioned so much within the supply-chain space, and how many blockchain companies claim compliance as a big thing, it’s amazing that there’s a lack of education on both the importance of it, and also the basics of how that works, and even benefits you as a consumer. It’s a silent, yet key part of the worlds supply chain data exchange. It is essentially the language of supply chain.

Nearly every product you purchase has a barcode (or GTIN-13 number). You might not know it, but nearly every single small to large company who creates a retail product has a special 8 digit number (GLN code) that forms part of every barcode that they create. Immediately, it gives a product an original source and an element of traceability. How cool is that. So simple, yet so effective.

Now imagine I, as a small business receive my order from my large international customer, and I am required to send a shipment using GS1 standard barcodes, this small piece of traceability gets elevated somewhat. GS1 have a barcode system called GS1–128, which put simply, is a bunch of barcodes, with a bunch of different data encoded.

Why would you do this? Well, it means that if I’m sending 6 pallets of product, I could put a document on each pallet in barcode form that shows exactly what product each pallet contains, the batch number of the product that is on the pallet, and it’s use by date, total weight etc etc. You get the point.

Here below is one of my old GS1–128 sheets that went on one of my pallets that I shipped. You’ll see a bunch of different barcodes and information. I’ll run through each number separately.

1) SSCC — This is really important. This code is a one-off code that is generated only within my GS1 account. I tell it what number SSCC code it will be for me using some predefined parameters, it will then combine that number with my location number, and then use an algorithm to create a checksum number. Each SSCC number is only to be used on one pallet or container, so for a 6-pallet shipment, I’d have 6 different numbers. Each pallet’s contents as a result would be tied to the SSCC number, making it easier to track within a warehouse, or if it is sent onwards to another destination. My business is too small to have a special stock management and tracking system (ERP), so I have a simple spreadsheet that I keep all this info on too just in case I have to refer to it in the future.

2) Content — This is simply the barcode of the product that I’m sending. You’ll notice that my barcode does not match my location prefix, but that is because we are quite new to using GS1. This will be changing soon.

3) This is the batch code of the product. If there’s a problem with it, it can be used to speak with the manufacturer of our product, and he in turn and trace the ingredients back to source.

4) Best before date on packaging.

5) Weight of the pallet.

6) You will notice on all the barcodes there are numbers within ( ) — This is how the standard is formed. Each number within the barcode represents a different piece of data — so, in this example (10) is the batch code. Every member of GS1 will use these same ( ) formats and across the board the numbers will always mean the same thing. If you think that most companies in the food product and healthcare industry are GS1 members, then you can see that any new solutions need to have some kind of conformity to this already excellent system.

Now this example I’ve given is the most basic of use cases. Just think about the complexity for the healthcare industry or for distributors dealing with many different companies’ products.

Instead of asking what is GS1, now we can move on to how it can be used to advantage in industry.