The Usefulness of GTIN

The GTIN's combination of characteristics allows trade items to be identified uniquely around the world, offering more efficient global trading and enhanced opportunities for cost savings and increased revenues.

• Uniqueness: The GTIN identifies an item uniquely. The rules for assigning GTINs ensure that every variation of an item (product or service) is allocated a single reference number that is globally unique.
• Non-significance: The GTIN numbering structure does not contain any meaningful information in itself. GTINs are simply pointers to database information that can be directly used in any company and in any country.
• Multi-sectoral: GTINs are unique across all business sectors. This means that a healthcare product, a PC sound card or an internet-ordered service are all identified in a compatible manner.
• International: GTINs are unique worldwide. A GTIN assigned anywhere in the world and can be used anywhere in the world.
• Security: Security of GTINs is provided through a combination of database lookup and the fixed length, numeric format that includes a standard Check Digit.
• Data Integrity: The Check Digit ensures the integrity of data passing into the system.
• Source Numbering: The GTIN is assigned by the brand owner of the product. Once assigned, all trading partners and internal users can use the GTIN. The same GTIN can be used to identify a series of identical items.
• Automatic Data Capture: One of the key benefits of the GTIN is that it can be encoded in many automatic data capture technologies (such as a bar code or radio frequency identification tags). Scanning allows the information flow to be linked to the physical flow of trade items through the supply chain.