Page 66 - DCAP306_DCAP511_E-COMMERCE_AND_E-BUSINESS

Unit 5: Intranet and Extranet for E-Commerce

Item Number: The EAN member uses these digits to number each product and product variant in their
range.

Check Digit: This number is produced by calculating the preceding twelve digits. Whenever a computer
decodes the bar symbol, it repeats the calculation and checks its answer against the check digit to verify
that the symbol has been correctly scanned and decoded.

EAN numbers are structured with 14, 13 or 8 digits as EAN- 14, EAN- 13, or EAN-8 as shown in table
5.1. EAN-13 is used to identify the consumer items sold at the point-of-sale. EAN -14 is used to identify
trade units like packages where the content items are identical to each other. When an item is very
small, EAN-8 is used.

Table 5.1 EAN Numbers

EAN-8 0000001234567C
EAN-13 0123456789012C

EAN-14 V123456789012C

V is used in EAN-14 and represents the logistic variant assigned by the manufacturer for trade items. It
is a number between 1 and 8. It is chosen by the manufacturer based on specific needs for representing a
packaging configuration.
C is the check digit that checks whether the preceding code is correctly captured. It is calculated using
the previous digits.
The 12 digits in the EAN code (other than the logistic variant and the check digit) have the structure as
shown in table 5.2.

Table 5.2 Structure of EAN code

First 3 digits Next 9 digits
PPP XXXXXXXXXX

PPP: EAN International allocates a prefix to the EAN Numbering Organization of a country or region.
XXXXXXXXXXX : The EAN Numbering Organization allocates these 9 digits to member organizations.
These digits contain the number allocated to the company and also the number assigned by the
company to an item. Each member company allocates an item number to identify each item.
5.2.4 Bar Coding

Bar codes represent EAN numbers used for identifying the items. Bar codes encode the numbers in
machine-readable form. The numeric value of the code is printed underneath the bar code symbol
which can be read by a scanner. Figure 5.4 depicts EAN-13 number represented by bar codes.

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