Major American retailers, brands and technology providers have agreed on a set of guidelines for assigning serialized identification numbers to individual items making it possible to trace individual products as they move through the global apparel supply chain.
“This document should be the first stop for any company that is implementing right now regardless of their level of understanding or involvement in item-level tagging. This, as with all GS1 US-led efforts, was created by industry, for industry and will serve the retail sector well for years to come,” said Doug Harvel, IT project leader at Jockey International, Inc.
“Our goal was to offer consistent and practical guidance to any business embarking on EPC-enabled RFID technology at the item level,” said Gena Morgan of GS1 US, who chaired the cross-industry user group that authored the guidelines. “It is another example of how industry is driving the responsible use of RFID technology in order to achieve interoperability and inventory visibility like never before all the way from the manufacturing source to the store shelf.”
Assigning a SGTIN to individual items means that two otherwise identical units of the same product are uniquely identifiable, making it possible to fully use the power of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for simultaneous inventory counts and ensure that the right product is in the right place, at the right time. Several of America’s leading retailers and brands were part of the working group responsible for the document, including: Jockey International, Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, Maidenform, PVH Corp. (owner of Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, and other leading brands), along with several technology providers.
