The GS1 US standards organization has evolved over the years into a service organization, helping industries address value chain challenges. In that spirit, the organization has devised The GS1 US Global Visibility Framework, an integrated suite of global standards that enables the visibility of physical assets (i.e., trade items, reusable assets, fixed assets, and work-in-process). It offers common ways to uniquely identify, capture and share information relating to an asset’s movement or state. According to a new whitepaper, this framework will help organizations make more informed business decisions.
The publication, titled The GS1 US Visibility Framework, lists the identifiers that link a product with the information pertaining to it.
“When a company assigns a GS1 identifier to a product, it defines a set of standardized information about the product (e.g., size, weight, location, etc.),” the whitepaper explains. “The most well known GS1 identifier is the Global Trade Item Number, or GTIN, which is carried by the U.P.C. barcode. Scanning the barcode automatically captures the unique identification from the GTIN and the captured data can then be shared in a variety of ways using standards and technologies that the GS1 framework supports.”
This identification system, combined with datasharing methods, transactional messaging standards such as electronic data interchange (EDI), and/or physical event information, establishes a connection between physical or logical things and the information the supply chain needs about them.
