EPCglobal

EPCglobal is an international standards organization that develops and maintains standards for the Electronic Product Code (EPC) and RFID technologies used to identify and track products across supply chains. It was created to provide a globally interoperable framework for item identification and data sharing in commerce.

The organization originated from the MIT Auto-ID Center and was established in 2003 as a joint venture between the Uniform Code Council (now GS1 US) and EAN International to create, publish, and promote EPC standards. EPCglobal served as the standards body for the EPCglobal Network, a data-sharing framework intended to enable trading partners to capture and exchange item-level information.

Key standards associated with EPCglobal include the EPC Class-1 Generation-2 air-interface protocol for passive RFID, which contributed to ISO 18000-63, and the EPC Information Services (EPCIS) specification for sharing events about EPCs throughout the supply chain. These standards enable unique identification, event data capture, and cross-system data sharing among participants.

Following the consolidation of UCC and EAN into GS1 in the mid-2000s, EPCglobal branding and governance were subsumed into GS1. EPCglobal standards are now maintained within GS1 as part of its suite of global identification and data-sharing standards. The overarching goal of EPCglobal has been to enhance supply-chain visibility, improve inventory accuracy, and support traceability and recall management by providing a universal identification framework for products and associated data.