07/04/14 - GS1, a non-profit, global organisation that develops and maintains the most widely-used supply chain standards system in the world and a leader in facilitating efficient international business, has announced that they have become a member of The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).  GS1 will work with the W3C community to collaborate on standards that shape the future of identification and description of products and “things” on the Web.

With The World Wide Web celebrating its 25th Anniversary in March and GS1 celebrating its 40th this year, the partnership comes at a poignant moment for both organisations.  Becoming a member of W3C will bring a variety of benefits to GS1 including working closely and inputting on the standards that are built for the web, as well as allowing GS1 standards to be aligned and integrated with current web standards where appropriate.

Steve Bratt, GS1’s CTO and the former CEO of W3C, commented, “I believe that our organisations can work together in the coming years to bridge two important communities. This will result in increased impact of both GS1 and W3C in the realm of designing and implementing standards to further enable global commerce and logistics for the benefit of the industry and consumers.”

The partnership comes at a time where product information quality is a key priority for the industry and consumers. New GS1 standards are focused on making product information more visible in search engines and on web pages.

Miguel Lopera, President and CEO of GS1 added, “With the rapid growth of on-line trading, correctly identifying products and accurately providing all the relevant information across the web in a consistent manner is vitally important for consumer confidence and brand reputation. GS1 is providing the tools that industry can use to better share information in the digital world and ultimately to better connect with consumers.”

ENDS

About GS1 UK

For further information or requests for interviews, please contact Tim Haidar: 020 7092 3584 / Tim.Haidar@gs1uk.org.

For more than 35 years GS1 UK has been working with its members to enable the efficient movement of goods and sharing of information. It drives supply chain efficiency alongside 111 other not-for-profit GS1 member organisations in 150 countries worldwide.

Having introduced the first truly global bar code numbering system in 1973, at least five billion GS1-compliant bar codes are now scanned everyday – making it the most widely used supply chain standards system in the world. GS1 identification numbers are now also commonly used in RFID tags, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) messages and for real-time global data exchange.

Providing independent support, GS1’s team of technical and business consultants also assist members with on-site implementation of appropriate supply chain information solutions.

Its 27,000+ UK members range from SMEs to major UK companies and include grocery retailers and food service companies, food manufacturers, healthcare and pharmaceuticals companies, and NHS Trusts. Its supervisory board includes senior directors from Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, as well as Unilever, P&G, Diageo and the NHS.

GS1 UK actively supports The Food Chain – a UK charity set up to ensure that people living with HIV can access the nutrition they need to lead healthy, independent lives. For more information, visit www.foodchain.org.uk

www.gs1uk.org

About W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web.

The Open Web Platform is a current major focus. Over 375 organizations are Members of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan, and Beihang University in China, and has additional Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org/.