Universal Product Code - UPC

Universal Product Code or UPC is a unique number that can be assigned to a particular product.

I happened to research this a bit for two reasons. One, it was in line with the posts I did about ISBN, ISAN and ISMN. Two, when I was checking out how I can get the mail in rebate for the optical mouse I bought, I stumbled across the term UPC.

The UPC is a bar-code that encodes a 12 digit decimal number (currently) that uniquely identifies a product produced by any company. If a '0' is prefixed to the 12 digit UPC, it becomes a EAN complaint code.

EAN - or the European Article Number is a super-set of the 12 digit UPC, the 10 digit ISBN and ISSN (we will talk about ISSN in another post).

The first six digits in the UPC are given by the Universal Code Council. The manufacture applies for the UPC code, and a particular sequence is assigned for them. The next five digits are chosen by the manufacturer for each of the product that is manufactured. The last digit is the check digit. It is a kind of redundancy check to ensure that the barcode reader has read it correctly - quite similar to the other numbers like ISBN, ISAN, ISMN or ISSN.

Each different type of packaging gets its own UPC manufactured by a company. It does not have the price coded in it - thus it allows for change of pricing, and deals that a retailer provides. The UPC barcode is read at the point of sale (POS) and then cross referenced with the price in a database, and they price is added to the bill. If the price needs to be changed, it can easily be done at the database. This is an advantage, as a change in price does not require a new UPC to be associated for the same product in the same package.

Now you know what those cryptic barcodes are in each package that is passed over the barcode reader in supermarkets.