A global nongovernmental group headquartered in Belgium credited with designing bar codes, called GS1, is urging the global retail industry to adopt next-generation bar codes.
GS1 says the new bar codes would aid companies and consumers in retrieving trusted product data.
“Our ambition is to serve this digital transformation by helping companies to more easily manage and exchange trusted data from the most upstream part of the supply chain up to consumers and patients,” GS1 CEO Renaud de Barbuat said.
At an event held by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul, Barbuat asked Korean retail and logistics business leaders to adopt digital transformation business practices, specifically swapping out current bar codes for two-dimensional QR codes powered by GS1.
The original bar code may have had limited information, but they were designed to alter supply chains to be more reliable and resilient, while the new QR codes are supposed to be used by 2027 and are a “marriage between GS1 standards and the web technologies,” according to the GS1 CEO.
GS1 CEO Renaud de Barbuat – Courtesy of Korean Herald
“It improves the consumer experience in e-commerce by offering more information about products, increases consumer trust through product transparency while enhanced traceability enables more automation across the supply chain with data,” he said.
New information will be accessible from the new bar codes like expiration date, product batch/lot number, serial number, and others.
According to the GS1 CEO, partners can “boost transparency, improve inventory management, enable traceability and sustainability initiatives, reduce waste, and simplify recall and return processes”.
The QR code operated by GS1 will allow consumers access to an infinite amount of brand-authorized content, not to mention important information like allergens.
GS1 stresses that the new QR codes are required to digitise the retail industry fully.
“Digital transformation that retail and logistics companies are faced with cannot be achieved only with efforts made by individual firms. Cooperation with business partners is essential,” Chang Keun-moo, GS1 Korea’s director, said.
