Welcome To ISWN

GTIN - UPC & EAN - SCC

GTIN (top)

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How does ISWN relate to established standards codes such as UPC (Universal Product Code) or EAN(European Article Number)? (top)

The ISWN code is fully compatible but complementary to UPC and other similar coding systems:
- ISWN is a specialized industry-specific code, whereas UPC and EAN are generically used across industries.

Note that UPC encapsulates ISBN (books), ISSN (periodicals) and ISMN (Music). It can be imagined that the ISWN could be allocated a subrange of the UPC code, similar to books (where ISBNs have an UPC range for 'Bookland').

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The ISWN code is strongly user-oriented; whereas UPC and EAN are machine-oriented.

UPC and EAN provide a meaningless number to uniquely identify a product at the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) level with a barcode.
The ISWN code is meaningfull and easy to read: it includes a consistent convention to indicate the origin of the wine (ISO country code), the producer, the wine, the vintage, and the bottle volume.

The ISWN structurally includes three levels of unique product code into one: ISWN-W (wine), ISWN-V (vintage), ISWN-B (bottle). It also allows to uniquely identify the origin of the wine (ISO country code) and wine producer (ISWN-P), which is not possible with the UPC or EAN codes.

The ISWN code was designed to allow anybody in the world to find all the relevant information about the wine. Therefore it includes free online full-text search engines and tools for wine producers to maintain rich content for all their wines.

     Related Links:
     www.uc-council.org
     www.ean-int.org

SCC (top)

Text to come

Related Links:
www.fotel.com/resources/faqs/scc.htm

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