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The Significance of Global Standards in the Supply Chain

Michelle Covey, VP of Innovation at GS1 US, explains how 2D barcodes will help CPGs, retailers, and consumers track product information.

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CPG Next’s ChatCPG is a 10 minute (or less) chat with a subject matter expert on all things related to CPGs on a digital transformation journey. Here, we speak with Michelle Covey, the vice president of innovation and partnerships at barcode standards organization GS1 US. The 2D barcode can hold so more information than the traditional linear barcode, opening the door to more track and trace and consumer engagement capabilities for CPG manufacturers. Scroll to the bottom to watch the interview.


Stephanie Neil: Welcome to CPG Next’s ChatCPG. These are quick 10 minute conversations with subject matter experts. And today we welcome Michelle Covey, who's the VP of innovation and partnerships at GS1. Michelle, thanks for joining me.

Michelle Covey: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here today.

Neil: So briefly for folks that might not know what the GS1 organization is, can you just give sort of a high level description of what it is and what you do?

Covey: Sure. So, GS1 is a global standards organization. Most people know us for the barcode and the administer of the barcode. So all of those barcodes that you see on your products that go beep at checkout, we manage the standards behind that. It's not just the barcode. We also manage a lot of business to business standards. Capturing, identifying locations and products, capturing them through barcodes to track them through the supply chain, sharing transactional information. We manage a lot of the standards, so we are a global organization. We are also represented in many of the major regions. So I represent GS1 US. There are other member organizations around the world that, serve their local regions and, yeah, we're here to help, advocate, and teach people about standards.

Neil: So why are standards so important? I mean, there's plenty of barcodes out there, but why is the standards aspect important?

Covey: It's a really good question. A lot of people always ask, you know, why, why do we have to use GS1, or why is it so important to use GS1 standards help. Businesses have an interoperable way of sharing information. So if you have a common language of business that is known around the globe, it makes it easy for one trading partner to do business with another trading partner that may have that same business requirement. So we try to take out the complexity of sharing information, making it easy to identify products globally so that they're unique. That one product can be recognized here in the United States, but it can also be recognized in Europe. It could be recognized in, in, you know, Africa and South America. It's the same product and it can be recognized globally.

Neil: Well, it's interesting too, because we recently did a story here at CPG Next on Yishi foods, which just went and got a cheap barcode somewhere and it really kind of confused the system at Whole Foods where they were selling because the barcode was associated with another product. So, it was recycled. So, I think the standards are probably important to just making sure that you don't get into a predicament like that, correct?

Covey: Exactly. So if you know, you've come to GS1 to get your product identifier, we do have a database for retailers and brands to look up that identifier, that GTIN, that we call it sometimes UPC, cause that's the barcode that we're used to seeing. Look that up into our database and it is associated to the company that actually licensed it. So, yeah, if you do go to a non GS1 source, it's not in that database, and so you can't be assured that it is associated to your product or to your company. It might be recycled, it could be counterfeit, you never know.

Neil: And quickly, define GTIN. Somebody said it to me once, the first time, and my eyes were glazed over because I didn't know what they were talking about.

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