The purpose of a bar code label is to facilitate the automatic exchange of data among all members within a channel of distribution, e.g. supplier, carrier, purchase and other intermediaries. The amount of data, in linear bar code, two-dimensional symbols and in human readable form, is dependent on the requirements of the trading partners. Where a bar code label is used in conjunction with electronic data bases and/or Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems, the amount of data may be significantly reduced and may consist of only one piece of data, the unique identifier for the transport unit.

For the purposes of this guideline a unit load is considered to be one or more transport packages or other items held together by means such as pallet, ship sheet, strapping, interlocking, glue, shrink wrap or net wrap, making them suitable for transport, stacking and storage as a unit. For the purposes of this guideline a transport package is considered to be a package intended for the transportation and handling of one or more articles, smaller packages, or bulk material. Both unit loads and transport packages are referred to as transport units in this document.

This document provides guidelines for the establishment of the machine readable (e.g. use of bar code and 2-D symbologies) and human readable data content of shipment labels for the electronics industry. The purpose of these labels is to ensure that the shipment containers can be uniquely identified in any commonly used distribution system.

These labels further support trading partner data needs in shipping, transport and receiving processes in the world-wide distribution of components and products.


SCOPE: This document has been created by the EDIFICE ADC group. Its intent is to serve as a base for company standards within the electronics industry community.

The expression 'COMpANY' is used in this document to represent the name of any company and may be replaced by your own company's name or be used as it is.

This document provides instructions for producing and applying bar codes for world-wide COMpANY product shipments. A brief description of the integration of B2B and bar codes in a distribution environment is included.

The wordings 'linear code' and 'bar code' are used as synonyms throughout his document.