GS1 is today celebrating the 40th anniversary of the bar code.
On 3 April 1973, leaders of the American grocery industry selected a single standard for product identification that is now known as the GS1 Bar Code.
Forty years later, over 5 billion products are scanned every day all over the world.
Commenting on the anniversary, Miguel Lopera, GS1 President and CEO, said: “GS1 has played a major role in shaping the landscape of the global market during the last 40 years because the organisation's visionary leaders saw the huge potential of collaboration in the area of standards that the bar code made possible for the entire supply chain.”
During the last four decades, GS1 identification solutions have become a foundation of business processes for close to 2 million users.
