Biscuits, burglars and Beetlejuice
When decoding the global supply chain, it’s useful to consider how and why it came to be encoded in the first place – literally, in the case of the powerful marriage of data and design that is the barcode.
The supply chain as we know it wouldn’t exist without the barcode’s seemingly simple linear arrangement of black stripes on a white background. As a child, barcodes made me think of the Hamburglar and Cruella DeVil. Now, they suggest Beetlejuice and Moira Rose. For many people, apparently, they suggest Oreos, as the recent “OREOCodes” campaign demonstrated (and led to a reported 230% increase in social engagement with the product).
Which is not bad, really, for a design that celebrates its fiftieth birthday this year. The barcode is the visual expression of the Universal Product Code (UPC) data standard developed by the U.S. grocery industry in the early seventies to help manage inventory and automate the checkout process, and went live in June 1974, on a pack of Wrigley’s gum scanned at a grocer’s in Troy, Ohio. In Europe, the European Article Number (EAN) was developed in the same decade, creating EAN barcodes compatible with American UPC barcodes. Encoding product identification in this way enabled retailers to handle larger and more varied inventories and increase checkout speed, while producers, suppliers, retailers and consumers alike all benefitted from the alignment and standardization of product coding and scanning technology.
Today, 10,000+ barcodes are scanned every second, identifying products and prices at points of sale all over the world, and the UPC, EAN and other global data standards are set and administered by so-called standards organizations such as Brussels-based GS1. But regulatory and consumer demands have changed since the barcode revolutionized the supply chain 50 years ago, and are constantly evolving and increasing. In this context, is the linear one-dimensional (1D) barcode still fit for purpose?
All there in black and white
The supply chain can seem more like a supply web, especially for those producing or using packaging for products sold in multiple markets and trying to navigate requirements imposed on them by a range of stakeholders.
For example, many jurisdictions now either have or are developing extended producer responsibility rules, which may come with stringent packaging data management, reporting and payment obligations. In the EU, the final text of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation amending the Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste was adopted by the European Parliament in April 2024, and is currently awaiting official endorsement by the Council. This framework aims to govern the “entire life cycle of packaging” in that market, promoting reuse, recycling, and the reduction of packaging waste, and tackling over-packaging. Certain products may be subject to their own specific supply chain legislation – the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act, for example, “outlines steps to achieve an interoperable and electronic way to identify and trace certain prescription drugs at the package level as they move through the supply chain”. Certain packing materials may be subject to countervailing or anti-dumping tariffs in some jurisdictions based on their country of origin. Different states and even different cities have different recycling facilities and requirements, and changing consumer habits and expectations feed debate about whether packaging should be reusable or recyclable, or whether deposit return schemes are effective. The barcode already occupies strategic real estate on the world’s packaging, so can we enhance this tool to help participants make their way through this tangled web, and to manage the packaging as well as identify products and prices at the checkout?
Different strokes
We see quick response (QR) codes now almost as regularly as we see barcodes. These appear as white shapes populated by black pixels rather than black stripes, running both vertically and horizontally, which gives them a much higher data storage capacity than the original linear barcode. You scan a QR code with the camera on your phone, and the code is resolved into a URL where you find a menu, a ticket, a payment portal, etc. However, when embedded with GS1 data standards, a QR code becomes what is called a two-dimensional or “2D” barcode, which is the best of both worlds – a code with the capacity to communicate large amounts of data in real time while also enabling a sale at the checkout.
This increase in data capacity offers exciting possibilities for the supply chain. For producers, the 2D barcode provides more granular information in manufacturing and logistics, and will help to create and capture the data needed for compliance reporting and traceability. They could, for example, use the URL to set out the composition of the product and its packaging to facilitate recycling and reuse, and to create digital product passports within the existing 1D barcode footprint on the packaging artwork. For retailers, 2D barcodes enable more proactive and precise inventory management, allowing them to track expiry dates and offer discounts or remove items from the shelves, to reduce wastage by identifying batch numbers in the event of a product recall, and to have more information available to staff when assisting customers.
For consumers and brands, 2D barcodes provide opportunities for greater engagement and more product information, with higher levels of data integrity. The URL might include, for example, details of an item’s provenance and authenticity, the source of ingredients and any allergens, special offers from the brand or opportunities to interact with it, or instructions on how to recycle or reuse the packaging. For recyclers, these offer a means of checking the constituent elements of a given material, enabling more efficient resource capturing and processing. This could also help create a resale market, as waste material becomes a collection of serial-numbered assets or secondhand spare parts rather than landfill.
Black and white sunrise
The transition from 1D to 2D barcodes is driven by an initiative known as Sunrise 2027, with the goal that by the end of 2027, retailers will have upgraded their point-of-sale systems to include scanners capable of reading both forms of coding. GS1 reports that this transition is already underway, “…with the new technology being tested in 48 countries across the world, representing 88% of the world’s GDP.”
As the global supply chain becomes less like a chain and more like a web, and as the demands placed on it make it more reliant than ever on smart coding and tracking solutions, the advent of the 2D barcode, with its advanced capabilities and possibilities, does indeed seem like a sunrise, using black and white to inject more color into supply chain data and product information.
