ISO/IEC 15459-4:2006

INTERNATIONAL ISO/IEC
STANDARD 15459-4
First edition
2006-03-01

Information technology — Unique
identifiers —
Part 4:
Unique identifiers for supply chain
management
Technologies de l'information — Identificateurs uniques —
Partie 4: Identificateurs uniques pour la gestion de la chaîne
d'approvisionnement




Reference number
ISO/IEC 15459-4:2006(E)
©
ISO/IEC 2006

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ISO/IEC 15459-4:2006(E)
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ISO/IEC 15459-4:2006(E)
Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical
Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of
ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees
established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical activity. ISO and IEC
technical committees collaborate in fields of mutual interest. Other international organizations, governmental
and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the work. In the field of information
technology, ISO and IEC have established a joint technical committee, ISO/IEC JTC 1.
International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2.
The main task of the joint technical committee is to prepare International Standards. Draft International
Standards adopted by the joint technical committee are circulated to national bodies for voting. Publication as
an International Standard requires approval by at least 75 % of the national bodies casting a vote.
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent
rights. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
ISO/IEC 15459-4 was prepared by Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology,
Subcommittee SC 31, Automatic identification and data capture techniques.
Because the scope of ISO/IEC 15459 has been expanded beyond transport units, the term “license plate” in
the first edition of ISO/IEC 15459 has been replaced by “unique identifier” in the second edition.
ISO/IEC 15459 consists of the following parts, under the general title Information technology — Unique
identifiers:
⎯ Part 1: Unique identifiers for transport units
⎯ Part 2: Registration procedures
⎯ Part 3: Common rules for unique identifiers
⎯ Part 4: Unique identifiers for supply chain management
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ISO/IEC 15459-4:2006(E)
Introduction
Unique identification can occur at many different levels in the supply chain, at the transport unit, at the item
level, and elsewhere. Such distinct entities are often handled by several parties: the sender, the receiver, one
or more carriers, customs authorities, etc. Each of these parties must be able to identify and trace the item so
that reference can be made to associated information such as configuration, maintenance history, address,
order number, contents of the item, weight, sender, batch or lot number, etc.
The information is often held on computer systems, and may be exchanged between parties involved via EDI
(Electronic Data Interchange) and XML (eXtensible Markup Language) messages.
There are considerable benefits if the identity of the item is represented in bar code format, or other AIDC
(Automatic Identification and Data Capture) media and attached to or made a constituent part of that which is
being uniquely identified so that
⎯ it can be read electronically, thus minimising errors;
⎯ one identity can be used by all parties;
⎯ each party can use the identity to look up its computer files to find the data associated with the item;
⎯ the identifier is unique within the class and cannot appear on any other item of the class during the
lifetime of the item.
The unique identifier for supply chain management defined in this part of ISO/IEC 15459 and represented in a
bar code label, two-dimensional symbol, radio-frequency identification tag, or other AIDC media attached to
the item meets these needs.
All AIDC technologies have the potential to encode a unique identifier. It is expected that application
standards for items, using various automatic identification technologies, will be developed based upon the
unique identifier as a prime key. These application standards may be made available from the Issuing Agency.

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INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/IEC 15459-4:2006(E)

Information technology — Unique identifiers —
Part 4:
Unique identifiers for supply chain management
1 Scope
This part of ISO/IEC 15459 specifies a unique, non-significant, string of characters for the unique identifier for
supply chain management. The character string is intended to be represented in a bar code label or other
AIDC media attached to the item to meet supply chain management needs. To address management needs
different classes of items are recognized in the various parts of ISO/IEC 15459, which allows different
requirements to be met by the unique identifiers associated with each class. The rules are defined for the
unique identifiers for supply chain management to identify the unique occurrence of an item, understood to
mean the layers zero and one as will be defined in two future International Standards (ISO 17367 and
ISO 17366, respectively).
2 Normative references
The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of this document. For dated
references, only the edition cited applies. For undated references, the latest edition of the referenced
document (including any amendments) applies.
ISO/IEC 646, Information technology — ISO 7-bit coded character set for information interchange
ISO/IEC 15418, Information technology — EAN/UCC Application Identifiers and Fact Data Identifiers and
1)
Maintenance
ISO/IEC 15459-2, Information technology — Unique identifiers — Part 2: Registration procedures
ISO/IEC 15459-3, Information technology — Unique identifiers — Part 3: Common rules for unique identifiers
ISO/IEC 9834-1, Information technology — Open Systems Interconnection — Procedures for the operation of
OSI Registration Authorities: General procedures and top arcs of the ASN.1 Object Identifier tree
ISO/IEC 19762 (all parts), Information technology — Automatic identification and data capture (AIDC)
techniques — Harmonized vocabulary
GS1 General Specifications, GS1
3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the terms and definitions given in ISO/IEC 19762 (all parts) and
ISO/IEC 15459-2 apply.

1) GS1 was formed in 2005 from the joinin
...