The Role and Benefits of GS1 System in Supply Chain Management - Assignment Example

Name Institution Tutor Date Words: 4422 Executive Summary The objective of the paper is to analyse the role and benefits of GS1 system in supply chain management.GS1 is an international non-profit organization that has developed and maintained visibility in supply chain management in a sustainable way. The case study attempts to look into and analyse some of the standards offered by the system sustains supply chain in an effective way. It analyses the formation of the system, the standards it applies, products and customers, the business partners and the benefits it brings to the supply chain as a unit. The data for analysis is from literature from books, journals and company websites. The recommendation and conclusion on the role of the GS1 system is finally provided at the end of the paper. Introduction Standard are agreements that structure any activity or organizational operations in an industry. They can comprise of rules or guidelines that all the members of an organization are adhering to. Their operations may be determined by the way they get implemented in that particular economic sector either for classification, description or measuring of products and services. Standards are very crucial for the very survival of businesses globally in that they help in choosing and ordering goods and services in the market. Without standards products acquisition would meet, a number of barriers and challenges to the individuals not present during transactions. Unique identifier These are generic and simple data used in multi sector and for international supply chain applications. It consists of two or more digits encoded in the data carrier in a format that is specific to each of the products. Difference of physical supply chain and logical supply chain Importance of global standards for electronic business messaging They enable faster and effective communication of accurate information between parties. The shared information is equally reliable and communication is uniform despite the global location of the involved parties. Global Trade Item Numbers This forms one of the building standards of the GS1 system. It has a unique application for products and services with prices, invoiced products, whether at the checkout or in the warehouse wherever they are along the supply chain. They have a provision of electronic catalogue that is unique and specific to each king of goods and services along the supply chain of operations. Electronic Product Codes are standards that enable businesses to respond to challenges of globalised supply chain. This is majorly through enhancement of efficiency and improvement of efficiency. Data Matrixes and QR code Data matrix need use and implementation in an open system where supplier can mark the products with knowledge that recipient is a in a position to correctly interpret the information. It is important to avoid cases of supplier and consumer relabeling the products for different consumers from different sectors of the consumer chains. Role of GDSN and EPC global GDSN has the role of enabling companies that are either partners or doing related business to possess similar information in their systems. In case of a change carried by one company is directly communicated to the other partner doing business with one of the companies. Up-to date and comprehensively communicated information between companies help in management by consumers and businesses to enhance efficiency and accuracy in handling of products. Brand owners have the advantage of getting products into the market more easily and marketing with marketing enhancement. The focus of this approach is provision of traceability mechanisms to the items in transit. EPC Global uses radio frequency for encoding of the GS1 identification keys. It is fundamental for the GS1 communication standards to operate functionally and in a manner, that cam get traced and applicable to handling of goods at international supply chain levels. It has ability of relaying information to the reader through the use and application of antenna with the chips integrated within the components of the device. Its greatest benefit is its ability for application from decentralised locations. How electronic communication make paper based invoicing redundant The electronic communication have a provision of clear guidelines creating versions that are electronic for certain documents used in supply chain of goods and products in the business. These standards enable trading partners to share information smoothly making the use of paper records redundant and unnecessary. It is applicable to the global business clientele despite the language spoken in those areas and despite the computer software and hardware under utilization. Few mistakes arise from keying errors and poor handwriting. GS1 Background Information It is an international non-profit association formed in 1977 with the main purpose of developing standards and solutions for improvement of efficiency and visibility of supply and demand chains globally and across various sectors (GS1, 2010). Its system is one the most widely used supply chain in the global product market. The main purpose and activities of the association is development of GS1 system that comprises of a series of standards for improving supply chain management. Its main activity is the development of GS1 system forming a series of standards designed purposefully for improvement of supply chain management (Clarke & Lee, 2000). Origin of the system The organization formation was 3o years ago by retailers and manufactures .The major intention improvement of efficiency in the supply chain of food and consumer goods in supermarkets. Presently millions of companies in dozens of sectors including transportation, health care and logistics, aeronautics, defence, health care, high tech and supply chain apply its use in almost all the aspects of their operations (Larry, Neil, Linda, & Jonathan, 1999). Discussion Role of GS1 GS1 has been in operation for the last 30 years offering services in supply chain management with main purpose of establishing and maintaining standards of goods and services. It offers standards enabling a framework that establishes standards for management of products, goods and services in relation to their efficient movement .with well established standards for operating and managing goods businesses easily improve the lives of people and business stability everywhere and anywhere (Clarke & Mckenny, 1995). Its standards enable effective transactions and exchanges between people and companies and form a basic guideline for carrying out operations between companies and organization without much complications and delays related to classification of goods and services offered by various entities in the business circles across the globe. The GS1 standards different companies representing various parts of supply chain business circles in a manner that is understandable and easy to manage. The use of these systems brings a lot of management efficiency in the industry and ensures that efficiency get achieved by the use of globally accredited and accepted standards (Cashon & Fisher, 1997). The different supply chain organizations brought together by the use of these standards range from software developers, transporters, retailers, distributors, hospitals, customers, developers, local and international organizations and more entities. The system has effective regulatory and self-sustainable model that effectively ensures that the parties involved get services in a manner that is satisfactory and considerate to needs and demands of all the players in the sector. Large multinational supply chains use the standards and small corners shops too. This ensures that the standards have effects on the lives of all consumers all over the world in a manner that is effective and sustainable. It gets application by large international producers like Unilever and the small individual artisans. The roles played by these standards are life touching and shaping of the global supply chain and business operations at all levels of economies. The use is global and embraced by all the supply chains in the global business arena. Companies may have divergent business interests and areas of operations but work together under GS1 standards in operating standardization of supply chains. The agreements that the companies come to under the leadership of this organization leads to efficient, faster supply chain and less costly operations. Without efforts of a neutral, non-profit organization and global organization like the GS1 system companies with different interests would automatically not agree on the standards of operations (Lee, Whang, & Padmanabhan, 1997). The organization makes understanding happen and offer benefits to consumers and business operators as well. The organization has offices in 108 countries and employee base of around 2000 personnel helping in operations and achievement of the goals and vision of the organization (Seidmann & Sundararajan, 1998). Since the main purpose of the organization is enhancing supply, chain and managing efficiency its operations are funded by contributions of the involved organizations. Well-developed and maintained standards play a vital part in operations of daily supply chain management and operations with little conflicts and interest disparities. If the designs are well-designed organizations move from the need of understanding how to get information to how the information can get used efficiently. Properly designed standards are more important in today’s hard economic challenges offering massive boost to operations and running of enterprises. They form clear foundations and understandable ground lowering cost of transactions hence lowering expenses to all through reduction of complexities. The proper standards make international transactions to get more sustainable, cost effective, more efficient and profitable (Micheal & Shaw, 2011). Four main standards they offer The standards offered by GS1 are mainly classified into the auto identification standards and the communication standards. The standards play a critical role in bringing value and benefits to the industry and businesses across the globe. The standards play an important role reducing complexities within and between organizations. The main standards provide easy means of communication between partners enabling ease of item identification, information sharing and quantity identification (DOD, 1998). There are companies that develop their own proprietary identification modules, classification methods and system of data capturing. Other companies also utilize systems functional within the confines of a single sector or country. This is complicated and lacks the global robustness and application .It lacks the language that enables global business entities to communicate in an effective way with minimal complexities (McLean, 1998). It equally does not allow for relay of reliable information to players in different parts of the world in a uniform way. The approach that is applicable to certain countries and not universal is risky and does not encourage uniformity. It generally lacks sustainable management mechanisms that come with the GS1 systems. Benefits the system brings GS1 system has proved to be a better option due to its robustness, scalability, global, multi sector, and user generated. Global No matter the location of your company or where the distributors and your suppliers are located the system will function perfectly well ensuring that you receive the goods and services required. This system is truly global with its ability to offer the services perfectly at any corner of the globe with minimal constraints and confusion. It is designed such that all the countries and regions have codes minimizing and eliminating confusion and mix up in communication (Robert & Norton, 1992). Robust The standards are designed purposefully for robustness. Their reaction and response is predictable even in unpredictable circumstances. All the identification keys are of a certain length and have benefit from check key preventing keystroke errors that can occur due to accidental applications. The data sets are best in class possessing highly reliable first time read rates. Over the past few years the GS1 data have had benefits from improvement of efficiency of the data it makes and develops for its operations in international chain supply systems. With improvement of accuracy of GS1 data it has become accurate and scalable with a resultant reliable result delivery (GS1 A. , 2011). Multi sector The data services offered by this system have ability to offer solutions within organizations and outside the organization in a sustainable and comprehensive way with minimal confusion and maintenance costs. Many industries and sectors have endorsed the use and application of the GS1 standards services in cooperating their application and use in running their processes. This organization enjoys strong alliance and partnership with numerous organizations including Consumer Goods Forum, Efficient Consumer Response, Association of Automatic Identification and Mobility and The World Consumers Organization. Due to its efficiency and sustainability many of the world health sectors are allowing its use and regulations are made to back up its use in the delivery of goods and services in this sector (GS1, 2010). The association has also signed a memorandum of understanding with the World Custom Organization with the aim of showing that the organization is imputing on attempts for protection of international borders. Member organizations have had opportunity for participation in UN centre for trade facilitation and electronic business operations. Equally, the organization has a long collaboration with operations of International Standards of Organizations (ISO). User Generated Global Standards Management Process (GSMP) builds and manages all the GS1 standards and processes for operations in the global arena. This process is a worldwide collaborative program that in cooperate all the parties in the sector bringing on board all the representatives of the businesses involved in use of these set of standards. The organization brings volunteers from all industries from all over the world with intention of identifying needs of standards, documents of best practice and gather information of business requirements. The entire process has result of obtaining solutions and standards of best practice for the supply chain management. Scalable The clients and beneficiaries of the services offered by GS1 are various; whether it is a small company or a large company, whether you have one single product or hundreds of products. The system will offer you the solutions to your supply chain management in a manner that is sustainable and effective with no complexities and waste of resources. The services offered by the GS1 association perfectly suits the needs of all organization in supply chain business and enterprises. The use of these standards is wise and intelligent choice for the small businesses because it will eventually be applicable in a positive way for the enterprise when it expends and get access into new territories. In case the business has already embraced the application of these kind of technology the mergers or movement into new economic regions will not pose any kind of stumbles but will find a properly developed ground for success. Generally, the GS1 system is flexible allowing and enabling the use an architecture guaranteeing maximum efficiency. With a build up based on two major components: automatic identification and communication standards. Automatic identification systems are composed of numerous elements comprising of; GS1 identification keys (IDs), GS1 Data carriers, Application Identifiers and EPC Identifier (Council, 1998). The ID keys and application Identifiers have a special design for the main purpose of working with GS1 data carriers through the GS1 bar codes.EPC incorporates the identification keys and other keys forming the foundation of encoding. The GS1 communication standards deal specifically with transaction data that have purpose of communicating completion of a transaction. It majorly deals with visibility data that has the major purpose of logging the actual events like loading of item into ships, offloading of the cargo or inspection by the customs authority (Robert & Norton, 1996). Their main purpose is allowing master data sharing between the business partners or trading partners with the employment of Global Data Synchronizing Network (GDSN).There is a connection of data on products and services daily by the GS1 system. This connection is between the physical things like products, logistic units, locations and assets providing information on the things transacted and monitored through the GS1 information systems. Products, Customers and Partners Nationally and Internationally The products and customers of this system are various and from different sectors of the economy and supply chain globally. The system has integration with a capability of providing identification and communication of information in relation to products, assets, locations and services. The system offers special integration capabilities to supply chain management in the world having high capabilities. The products using the applications and support of this system are various and apply the use of the following solution approaches for communication and tracing of goods in transits and transportation (Viehland & Wong, 2007). The products of the industry are drawn from various sectors of the economy in a sustainable and self-supportive way for the benefit of humanity and supply chain as a whole. The products in cooperated in the sector lead to business advantages and profit generation for the investors and entire global business platform (Vaidynathan, 2005). The products are in retail ensuring that the supply chain is efficient and reliable. The uses of the service in health care ensure that drugs have the ability of traceability and automatic identification throughout the health care sector. In transport and logistics companies, get competitive advantages in management of transported products and in communication with the customs of different countries (Singh, 2003). Applications in consumer electronics enable the monitoring of an electronic throughout its lifecycle and checking up on its efficiency and performance during operational duration. Equally other sectors have had application of the use of the products and services of GS1 operations in sectors like automotive exploration, financial services and defence sectors (Sabbaghi, 2007). To deliver quality services GS1 has operating conditions and working relations with international standard bodies, inter-governmental bodies, sector specific organizations and multinational user groups. The working relations are collaborative for efficient and sustainable operations of supply chain management and goods delivery to destinations in an effective and sustainable manner (Pearson, 2006). For a long time the major customers of the system have majored in retail and production of goods and services both at country level and for the international markets. The major focus of the system has occurred in technology he application of different sectors and collaborators in the retail supply. Association of Retail Technology (ARTS) applies the use of the standards in its services where appropriate creating a close relationship between ARTS and GS1 services ensuring efficiency between the organizations in the supply chain sector. ARTS have a focus on application to application and GS 1 has a focus on in store website interoperability ensuring interoperations between the two organizations and efficiency in their application for benefit of users and general efficiency in supply chain management and operations in different sectors of the economy applying their usage (McHugh & Dama, 2002). The consumer goods form is another customer of the GS1 system of operations. It is a global based consumer goods transport network with an independent basement for its operations in the global arena. It collaborates with industrial players bringing together CEOs and top management of about 650 manufacturers, retailers, service providers and different stakeholders from over 70 countries from across the world. Its target is provision of a unique platform of knowledge exchange, leadership and networking between business partners, retailers, collaborators and manufacturers with a major focus on non-competitive business issues for improvement of the standards of the sector. The strength applied herein is its ability for provision of privilege and knowledge it provides to key players in the supply chain with incisive sustainable measures for operating and running of the industry. Members have a mandate for developing of positions for strategic management programs for improvement and better management of the factors affecting international supply chain. The collaboration is always in a non-competitive approach hence factoring in the issues of all the business competitors in a neutral and uniformly beneficial approach to all the involved parties. The process is comprehensively collaborative with the main aim of improvement to the industry without losses to the parties and increase of business acumen to all the users. This organization has its headquarters in Paris with regional offices in New York DC ,Singapore , Shanghais and Tokyo. With these management hubs, it offers effective services to its customers from all over the globe in an efficient way. Food Marketing Institute (FMI) conducts research programs in education, public relation and industrial affairs on behalf of about 1500 food industry members. They are majorly food wholesalers and retailers in the US and around the world, .Membership comprises of large food chains, independent supermarkets and regional firms. The membership is 200 companies from 50 countries. There was a recent cooperation between FMI and GS1 linking the association enabling recall of products from their location with internet. The process is an easy to use link enabling recall of products and communication of partners in an effective and efficient way .Partners are put in an effective position to easily communicate and get solutions easily moving away from crisis in relation to supply of goods. The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) is a representation of the world’s leading manufacturers of branded foods, consumer products and beverage companies. Since 1908, the association has advocated for policies in the sector that encourage freedom of its services and prosperity in the sector in a sustainable way. Membership is in 50 states and sales are about 6.8 million US dollars annually. Board members and company chiefs head the association managing issues and factors of operations and development strategies. National Retail Foundation (NRF) is the largest world trade association with a membership of all retail formats and retail distribution channels. The customers and clients include discounts, catalogues, internet, independent stores, chain restaurants, drug stores and grocery outlets. Other members include retail goods, services, and industry key partners. Among the final collaborators with this association is the Produce Marketing Association (PMA).They form an association with all the floral producers at the global platform forming markets and association with clients and buyers of products. Members are buyers and sellers of floral and floral related products along the supply chain at the global arena. Therefore, the customers of the GS1 system use these organization and associations for the perfection and running of their businesses in a sustainable and customer friendly way. Benefits of the system of standards The system of data are built around a close registry which when combined form a global registry with a closed network for a powerful environment. This leads to synchronization of secure data and establishment of reliable information base in supply chains across the world. With this system of data, handling partners have the latest information and any changes originating from different companies are immediately relayed to members or associates for appropriate management measures. In case suppliers and customers are looking for certain information whether up to date or accurate, they are in a position to apply the services of these standards to obtain the information in a smooth, less expensive and a quicker way. The standards provide a truthful medium for obtaining of information in a quick and effective way in relation to the traditional models of obtaining supply chain information and services in the sector (GS1 A. , 2011). GS1 Global Registry provides uniqueness and information facilitation of locating products and items efficiently within the global systems. It is a source of critical information in a pool of data establishing synchronization information and use of validation data sets in management of cargo movements and freighter services. Conclusion The standards also offer electronic and digital data storage forming catalogues for standardization of items. They develop a data quality program that is long term and sustainable. When the system gets incorporated from start of a business the model becomes sustainable and useful in the whole process of the enterprise. For the sake of correct and uniform classification of data the system, give common language of classification of products everywhere in the world of enterprise development. This enables ease of communication and global understanding between business partners and different producers in the world arena. The system has the ability to trust life and improve the status of businesses .Globally on daily operations people use products and bank services for operations using millions of dollars and Euros. The businesses range from local levels like supermarkets and to the international levels like online shopping. Without the use of bar codes developed by this system there would probably be massive confusion and inefficiency in operations and business transactions leading to losses both financially and for the sake of business credibility and viability. Consumers have trusted the bar code that the beep is believed to send the correct billing amount to cashiers since its reliability and security is perfectly earned and is beyond reproach. These systems and standards are global, robust, scalable, multi sectored and user generated supporting and enhancing operations of different companies in the world. Bibliography Cashon, C., & Fisher, M. (1997). 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