Companies Can Now Exchange Product Information for 15 million Products Through GDSN

With continuous growth over the years GS1’s GDSN reaches a landmark 15 million global trade items.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, September 22^nd 2014 – GS1®, a non-profit, global organisation that develops and maintains the most widely-used supply chain standards system in the world and a leader in facilitating efficient global business, has announced today that its GS1 Global Registry® has reached 15 million product items. The GS1 Global Registry is a directory operated by GS1 that allows companies to synchronise standardised product data with trading partners worldwide. It is one of the most essential tools within the GS1 Global Data Synchronisation Network (GDSN®), which provides a powerful environment for secure and continuous synchronisation of accurate data between businesses.

“Increased speed to market, improved accuracy and a more efficient supply chain were the main reasons for our adoption of global data synchronisation.  GDSN not only means that we and our trading partners are using the same data, but GS1 has also given us the data quality that we are looking for” commented Roman Coba, Chief Information Officer at McCain Foods Limited.

When GS1 first launched its GDSN in October 2004, there were only 74,000 items shared among trading partners in 13 countries, in the Global Registry. Today, over 25,000 companies have made the GS1 GDSN a cornerstone of their supply chain initiatives in more than 150 countries across multiple industry sectors. GDSN is also being used to bring value to new business processes which were not envisioned ten years ago, demonstrating that many global data synchronisation users are implementing GS1 standards in new ways, such as regulatory registration compliance.

Since hitting the 10 million mark in 2012, GS1 has also seen an increase of use of global data synchronisation in the Healthcare sector with near to 1 million items in the Global Registry, mainly for medical devices, in the frame of the US FDA Unique Device Identification rule. Organisations that have implemented the technology have improved on-shelf availability and made their logistics, accounting, customer service and inventory management substantially more efficient by reducing the number of supply chain disruptions with accurate product data.

“The 15 million item milestone indicates the ever growing success of GDSN as well as demonstrating Data Quality standards going from strength to strength globally. In the last two years many organisations have recognised the benefits of scale that adoption of GDSN brings to their business processes, which showcases the advantages of the uptake of GS1 standards” said Miguel Lopera, GS1 President and CEO.

Looking forward, past this 15 million uptake landmark, GS1 expects to see an overall increase of the usage of GDSN in several different industries, such as healthcare, retail, food service and many more. There will be a growing demand for data around how a product is delivered to market, including handling instructions, traceability attributes, nutrition information, regulatory compliance and classification. Demand for more visible data, such as nutritional information and product specification, will increase dramatically, driven by regulations, consumers, and the growth of multi-channel shopping. Adopting an industry standard solution like GDSN would be the answer to these requirements.

For further information, please contact GS1 Hong Kong by phone (852) 2863-9701 or at info@gs1hk.org.

About GS1

GS1 is a neutral, not-for-profit, global organisation that develops and maintains the most widely-used supply chain standards system in the world. GS1 standards improve the efficiency, safety, and visibility of supply chains across multiple sectors. With local Member Organisations in over 110 countries, GS1 engages with communities of trading partners, industry organisations, governments, and technology providers to understand and respond to their business needs through the adoption and implementation of global standards. GS1 is driven by over a million user companies, which execute more than six billion transactions daily in 150 countries using GS1 standards.

More information at www.gs1.org .