In business processes between trading partners (i.e. B2B processes), the exchange of various information prior to, accompanying and following the physical flow of goods has become more and more important. This information may be exchanged electronically and/or via documents, labels and RFID tags.
The information that is exchanged includes, but is not limited to, information about products, parties and locations.
To efficiently handle these processes electronically, there is a need for unique identification of the different entities and data elements. This especially applies to product and party identification, as these are key data elements in trade, logistics and manufacturing processes.

The EDIFICE guideline for the Global Unique Identification scheme defines the entities, the structure and the syntax rules that have to be applied to create globally unique numbers for these entities.
The method applied is based upon the International Standard ISO/IEC 15459 series for "Information Technology Unique Identifiers" that specifies unique identifiers for supply chain management, such as transport units, (known as the License Plate number), serialised items, lot/batch numbers, returnable transport items or groupings of transport units.


SCOPE: This guideline describes the structure and application for the unique identification of the following entities:

• Companies
  A company is a party to a transaction, meaning a trading partner in a B2B relationship.

• Organisational (sub-)units of companies
  An organisational (sub-)unit may be a legal entity (i.e. a subsidiary), a division, a department or any other organisational unit uniquely identified and defined within a company

• Locations (defined by companies)
  A location may be any physical facility such as a manufacturing plant, branch office, building or even a single room or loading dock, that is uniquely identified and defined within a company.

• Products
  A product may be a single part, component, assembly or any other finished good, regardless of its value and stage in the supply chain. A product identification is a unique code assigned to a product by its manufacturer.

• Serial number
  A traceability number is a unique code identifying a lot number, a batch number or another number under which a group of entities/products is traceable in the manufacturer's computer system. The traceability number is assigned by the manufacturer.

• Traceability (i.e. batch / lot) numbers
  A returnable transport item (RTI) may be any type of reusable packaging such as a pallet, skid, box or crate which is used to facilitate handling of products. RTIs are designed and built so they can be reused several times for transport purposes.

• Returnable transport items
  A serial number is a unique code assigned to a product by its manufacturer for traceablity purposes.

• Groupings of Transport UnitS
  In supply chain management and logistics, a (logical) grouping of transport units is used to facilitate and ensure that all entities of the grouping are handled, shipped and delivered together to the destination. Each (logical) group is assigned an identification, which is commonly known as Bill of Lading, Waybill, CMR or simply shipment identification number.

Transport Units themselves are not addressed in this guideline. For details refer to the EDIFICE License Plate Guideline Issue 6.

Unique Identification of Packaging is being addressed by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC31 WG2 and ISO TC122. This guideline will be updated accordingly as soon as these committees have published their recommendations.

The definition of the hierarchical structure of unique identifiers is not addressed in this guideline.

Because many of these data elements are shown on labels and are encoded in a 1D symbol or any kind of high capacity media (e.g. 2D symbol, RFID Tag), appropriate data identifiers have been defined