UCC/EAN-128 
UCC/EAN Application Identifiers and the UCC/EAN-128 Symbology
The success of the EAN.UCC system for the identification of products and services led to increasing requests from the user companies for an expansion of the system beyond primary identification. In response to these demands, EAN.UCC has focused its activities on the development of solutions enabling companies to encode, in bar code form, more information than basic identification. This type of supplementary information (such as, best before date, batch number, etc.) can be used to improve the management of the supply chain.�
        The goal is to have a global and open system that meets the requirements of business.�
        The two main components of any bar code are data architecture and symbology.�

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Ans: An Application Identifier is a prefix used to identify the meaning and the format of the data that follows it (data field).�AIs have been defined for identification, traceability data, dates, quantity, measurements, locations, and many other types of information. The data presented can be alphanumeric or numeric.�

Ans: The benefits of EAN.UCC Application identifiers are:

An open standard

EAN.UCC Application Identifiers provide an open standard which can be used and understood by all companies in the trading chain, regardless of the company that originally issued the codes.�

A stable standard

To meet business needs, new AIs are made available in standardised form. The construction of the system guarantees its integrity. New AIs can be released without affecting existing users. Companies wishing to include new functionalities can easily incorporate new AIs in their existing system.�

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Ans: A large number of AIs covering the majority of industry requirements have already been defined. The principal AI categories include :�

Identification numbers

These AIs contain data to identify:

• an item

• the data field includes the EAN-8

• EAN-13 or EAN-14 item identification number.�

• a logistic unit

which must be given a unique serial number called the Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC). It provides companies with a facility to identify logistic units (pallets,drums, rolls) for tracking and tracing purposes.�A returnable asset, the data field includes the EAN-13 number of the asset plus an optional serial number.

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Transaction References and Location Numbers: 

These AIs enable the encoding of transaction references and location numbers facilitating the delivery/order/invoice reconciliation process, identifying shipping origin, sorting shipments, etc. Such AIs include Customer's Purchase Order Number, Bill to (invoice to) Location Number and Ship to (deliver to) postal code.�

The UCC/EAN-128 Symbology�

The symbology specified for the representation of Application Identifier data is UCC/EAN-128, a variant of 'Code 128', which use is exclusively reserved to GS1 and the Uniform Code Council (UCC).�

It is excellent in hospital or logistic applications but it is not intended to be used for data to be scanned at the point of sales in retail outlets.�

Ques: What are the benefits of the UCC/EAN-128 symbology ?�
Ans: UCC/EAN-128 offers 3 major advantages, it is:�

Complete: It is one of the most complete, alphanumeric, one-dimensional symbologies available today. The use of three different character sets (A, B and C), facilitates the encoding of the full 128 ASCII character set.�

Compact: Code 128 is one of the most compact linear bar code symbologies. Character set C enables numeric data to be represented in a double density mode. Here, two digits are represented by only one symbol character saving valuable space.�

Concatenable: This enables to combine multiple AIs and their fields into a single bar code.�

Reliable: Code 128 symbols use two independent self-checking features which improves printing and scanning reliability.

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Ques: What is UCC/EAN-128's format?�

Ans: UCC128 labels are pressure sensitive labels that are affixed to each carton and/or pallet and provide information about a particular shipment. This label alerts the trading partner about shipment information--who the vendor is, carton content, store ship to location, etc., and is a mix of both human readable as well as scannable information. The UCC128 label on every carton is scanned at its destination location and information usually is tied to an Advance Ship Notice that has already been transmitted via EDI to the trading partner.

UCC128 labels follow a specific guideline as set forth by the trading partner, and contain information adhering to the UCC (Uniform Code Council) and EAN (European Article Numbering) standard guidelines. This information helps aid your trading partners to automatically identify you within the global supply chain. By using the UCC128 label, vendors become compliant for trade throughout the world and across industry channels.

The most notable feature of the label is the SSCC-18 (Serial Container Shipping Code) found on every UCC128 label. This 20 digit number, human readable as well as scannable, allows a trading partner to not only identify you as a vendor but also provides information regarding a unique sequence for each carton.

UCC/EAN-128 bar codes always contain a special non-data character known as function 1 (FNC 1), which follows the start character of the bar code. It enables scanners and processing software to auto-discriminate between UCC/EAN-128 and other bar code symbologies, and subsequently only process relevant data.�

The UCC/EAN-128 bar code is made up as follows:
  a light margin�
  a start character A, B or C�
  a FNC 1 character�
  Data (Application Identifier + data field)
  a symbol check character�
  a stop character�
  a light margin