Monthly Archives: February 2015

Global forum of GS1 and application of GS1 standards for successful business

The international organization GS1 carried out a global forum under the slogan “The power of GS1 to change the way we live and work” from 9 until 13 of February. The managing director of “Olymp – Safety Equipment“, Boril Tashev, as well as a representative of the Bulgarian Association “Labor, Health, Safety” were among the 670 delegates from around 80 countries and participated in opening the forum in Brussels. Bulgaria was represented by a delegation, with the administrator of the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Cvetan Simeonov, as its leader.

The event included parallel seminars on diverse topics inspiring many plenary sessions, meetings of the working groups, exhibits and conferences concerning important projects and key initiatives from all over the world.

The first day was devoted to the GS1 standards in healthcare. Among the lecturers were Mike Wallace (Abbott Laboratories), Steve Graham from the Ministry of Health of the United Kingdom and Daniel Torntun (GAVI Alliance). Moreover, Chris Reswebber (JM Smucker Co.), Richard Jenkins (Marks & Spencer) and Amitt Menipaz (e-Bay) presented the topic of “Retail trade”.

During the second day the main topics of the plenary sessions were the incorporation of GS1 standards in the transportation, the logistics and the quality of the presented data.

The application of the GS1 standards in the transportation and the logistics contribute to a more transparent service and reduces the time of delivery. Data about the results of the initiative for the harmonization of the e-messages in the United Kingdom was presented on the forum. It started in the early 2007 with a project by Tesco.

At first, the aviso of the delivery and the process of marking the delivery units of fresh food stood in the limelight. Gradually the project started to cover the rest of the products. As a result of the project a realization of savings amounting to 170 million pounds are expected in 2016.

David McNeil of OneSteel explained the advantages for the transportation companies of achieving a high level of transparency in the management of delivery “from start to end” in the intermodal transportation corridors.

A special attention was given to the “quality of data” for increasing the effectiveness, reducing the costs and ensuring the security of the consumers.

Striving for 100% data quality is a top priority for GS1, because the information stored in the services based on the GS1 standards, is used by various applications, end users and regulators. For example, data quality plays a critical role in presenting the nutritional information and allergens to the end users according to Regulation 1169/2011 of the EU.

The low quality of information affects the effectiveness of the processes in the distribution centers and the retail chains negatively. A current research in the field, carried out by Bayard Consulting shows that 70% of the items of one retail chain included in the research, lacks any kind of logistic size. This subsequently leads to problems with planning the transportation, storage and processing the deliveries.