Deciphering Barcodes
Welcome back to our first blog of 2021! Considering how 2020 was globally, it has been great to see the energy in the Cannabis industry already this year! We are going to keep it light for the start of the year and discuss some of the different barcodes you see around the industry and some of the data they provide.
Barcodes are used to provide quick access to the data they encode. A barcode scanner is essentially nothing more than an AI driven keyboard that returns the encoded data from the scanned symbol. The numbers below the symbol are commonly referred to as the human readable numbers. There are many barcode standards out there but today we are going to focus on some of the more common barcodes seen around the Cannabis industry; GS1-128, UPC-A, and QR Codes.
Barcodes are not just for retail. They can also be used around the physical plant as a means of identification which can reduce human entry error and incrementally save labour. Finding places to effectively leverage barcode symbols would be considered an investment in Cost of Good Quality and could lead to reduction in Costs of Poor Quality.
GS1-128 Example containing the GTIN, Expiry and Batch/Lot Number
Here in Canada the barcode you see on most product labels, and or Master Case labels is the GS1-128 Barcode (as seen to the right). The numbers within the parenthesis are called Application Identifiers (AI’s). Common AI’s include:
(01) – Global Trade Item Number (GTIN14)
(10) – Lot Number (20 characters maximum, alphanumeric)
(13) – Packaging Date (YYMMDD)
(17) – Expiry Date (YYMMDD)
(90) – Case lot size (00##)
Every product sold requires a GTIN, and you can get a GTIN from GS1 (https://www.gs1.org/). That GTIN is now registered to your product and must be included with the barcode. The lot number is a string of characters you specify to a maximum of 20 (you will want to keep that in mind when establishing your batch and lot numbering schemes). The packaging date is the date that the product lot or batch was packaged on, not to be confused with the date it was harvested, trimmed, dried, cured, bulked, etc. The expiry date is relatively useless at this stage, as most Cannabis products currently have no expiry date listed, therefore you will commonly see 500723 listed after the (17) AI which is also referred to as “The end of time”. The Case Lot size is a 4 digit number with zero’s preceeding the case size, ie if your master case is a 12-pack of 3.5g bottles, you’re (90) AI will read 0012. It’s important to note that this barcode may be stacked on the product label,
UPC-A Example
The next barcode we are going to discuss is the UPC-A symbol (as seen on the left). This is what most people think of when they hear the word “barcode”. It is a fixed length of 12 numeric only characters. On your product label you would encode your GTIN12 number as provided by GS1 so that it matches your GTIN14 number in your GS1-128 symbol.
QR Code example
Last barcode we’re going to discuss for today is the QR Code (seen here on the right). I am sure you have seen these around, especially in post-COVID-19 era businesses and restaurants for touchless menus. They are often used to encode web addresses or links but can also be used to redirect to several other media formats including video and pictures. An example use case for a QR Code in the physical plant would be to adhere one to your operational equipment that, upon scanning on a smart device, could take the user to a playlist of videos on how to clean, use and maintain the equipment. Now anyone working with that piece of equipment can get instant access to relevant information about that piece of equipment without having to search out manufacturer names and equipment model numbers saving you time on labour, reduce opportunity for human error, and provide the data required in real-time to make informed decisions at the time of execution.