Global Trade Item Number GTIN

"A GS1 GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) is a globally unique identification number for an item or product and can be used to identify your products at any packaging level. It’s powerful because it provides a common language for your business entities and trading partners across the world to identify your item and share its data easily." ref GS1

GTINs are also used for Universal Product Codes (UPCs), primarily in North America and the European Article Numbers (EANs) / International Article Numbers (IANs). The production of standardised barcodes are used for worldwide product identification, allowing products to be scanned at points-of-sale, tracked throughout supply chains and contribute to a global inventory of products. UPCs are 12-digit codes, EANs are 13-digit codes, whilst GTINs can vary in length of 8, 12, 13, or 14 digits, depending on the type of product and the region, but normally within 14-digit data structure.

The GTIN system is a global supply chain solution that enables identification of any trade item that may be priced, ordered or invoiced at any point in the supply chain upon which there is a need to retrieve predefined information. Whatever the sector and kind of trade item, the rules in the Global Trade Item Number Management Standard apply. This is an extract from the Global Trade Item Number Management Guideline for Construction Products which provides construction-specific examples of the standard, published on Jan 2023 by GS1, pdf available here.

"Unique identification of construction products is critical to maintaining operational efficiencies that stakeholders rely on to exchange information about products in consistent ways, as well as ensuring the smooth operations of global supply chains. Additionally, the unique identification of construction products is crucial when complying with various regulations across the globe. Finally, unique identification, as well as communication between trading partners of changes to the products, are essential to ensure the right product is made available on the store shelf or directly to the end user. "

"Construction products typically have a long life span, with some of them being in active use for 50 or even 100 years. There are many external factors that might influence the usage and the value of a construction product over the course of its life. Examples of such factors are construction methods, regulations and knowledge about different material’s properties in both the short-and the long-term."

"To building owners and facility managers, the challenge of knowing what is in a building has always been there, but the rapid development of new materials combined with the increased focus on sustainability and circularity has accentuated these stakeholder’s need to efficiently track construction products, and their properties and content, throughout their complete lifecycle. To meet these needs, this document further illustrates examples of how to manage GTINs for parties involved in maintenance, repair, upgrade, reuse, and recycling of construction products."

"This document is designed to help industry make consistent decisions about the unique identification of construction products in open supply chains and to comply with the general GTIN Management Standard. Overall, costs are minimised when all stakeholders throughout a products lifecycle adhere to the GTIN Management Standard. In addition, this could simplify CO2footprint calculations, track products and their content to simplify circular economy, re-use, recovery, as well as compliance with different green building certification schemes."

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