Issue #25 | April 21, 2005

Though I have been involved with EPC Global for a couple of years now, I had never been to their U.S. headquarters before. Nestled in lovely Lawrenceville , New Jersey , in retrospect I realize I had to see their operation to fully appreciate the scope of what it entails.The initial purpose of my drive to Jersey was to meet with Sue Hutchinson, the Hardware Action Group facilitator. She and I are co-presenting at the upcoming UConnect conference June 7 - 9 in Dallas , the conference where supply chain users discuss, plan, and learn how to use standards for their business needs. Working with Sue on our presentation, gave me a unique opportunity to have a behind the scenes look at the organization everyone talks about in the RFID industry.

EPC Global US is contained within the offices of the Uniform Code Council, home of EAN.UCC, UCCnet, and RosettaNet. Most people probably know UCC in particular had developed the global standards for bar-codes. What may be less known is that they have their hands in all sorts of everyday standards we take for granted. EAN stands for the European Art icle Numbering system. UCC has always been based in the United States . Each of these organizations started autonomously until they realized they should be working together. So back in the 1970's they combined and became EAN-UCC. With time, the standards were adopted for use in Latin America , Asia , and numerous other parts of the world; and the standards expanded beyond bar codes to e-commerce and other data standards as well.

Talk about a brain trust of standards under one roof! I knew EPC Global was a part of EAN.UCC, but I didn't know they shared the same water-cooler. Some of the people working for EPC Global came from one of these sister organizations. They have applied and updated the processes used to develop other automatic identification and data synchronization standards to RFID technology. Other employees of EPC Global were hired from different industries, expanding the knowledge-base from which to tackle the challenges of RFID.

Of course, the standards - like the organizations themselves - are designed to work together. What's really neat is that you can walk down the hall and talk to the resident expert regarding any particular standard. There are even veterans that worked on the first bar-code standard initiatives back in 1974. As Sue and I were having lunch, the current bar-code brain trust sat at the table behind us. According to Sue, they've worked with companies in 23 different industries to use identifiers and data sharing to allow more effective trading partnerships.

What is truly amazing to me is that there are more than 100 organizations around the globe with a structure similar to this - a veritable standards "industry". All are under the umbrella of the EAN-UCC System, which is about to become "GS1". Why the name change? The current name is simply not an accurate reflection of what they do anymore.

In my last several columns, I have tried to drive home the importance of standards. There is a complete article here. The May, 2005 issue of RFID Operations magazine for an RFID International Standards Wall Chart. It is attractive enough to actually do as suggested and hang on your wall for quick reference.

Written by Louis Sirico
Copyright ? 2005 Louis Sirico