Wondering who we are at GS1 and what value we provide? We develop global standards that enable companies to achieve better efficiency, safety and traceability throughout the entire value chain. One of our most widely used and well-known standards is the barcode. It was scanned for the first time 50 years ago on a pack of chewing gum. Today, it is hard to imagine any form of trade without a barcode. In fact, it is scanned 10 billion times around the globe every day. A lot has happened in 50 years, and we continue to create the conditions for industries and companies to make their value chains more efficient. We are active in grocery, retail, healthcare, transport and logistics, construction, and pharmacies. We are a not-for-profit, neutral and user-driven organisation. This means that you, as a user of GS1 standards, can also help drive their development. We operate all over the world. We believe in the power of a global, shared digital business language that can help you meet requirements and needs from legislators, your market and your patients or consumers. Want to learn more about how GS1 can transform your industry? Contact us at GS1 Sweden. Welcome to GS1 Sweden and our webinar on GTIN and item hierarchies. My name is Lena Grönlund and here at GS1 I am responsible, among other things, for our standards for item information. Our agenda today is quite brief. A little about GS1 Sweden. Then my colleague Stefan will help you understand GTIN and explain it. I will come back later and talk about item hierarchies. So, who are GS1? We are a global organisation. We are present in 120 countries. 10 billion barcodes are scanned every day worldwide. That is actually more than the number of Google searches per day. More than two million companies use our standards worldwide. Here at GS1 Sweden, we have worked in construction for several years. Construction has now also become a global focus sector for GS1. Here in Sweden, we have around 15,000 customers from almost every industry. When it comes to product information, or item information. Almost all product information in the grocery trade, pharmacies, foodservice and Systembolaget flows through the GDSN network and our data pool Validoo. Here at GS1 Sweden, we are 80 people working with our standards and related services. Within GS1, we have four values that we always follow. Our standards are global. We are user-driven, which means that we do and work on what our customers have business needs for. We are open and collaborative. We offer a neutral platform for our customers to collaborate around. We are also not-for-profit, which means that we are allowed to make a profit, but the profit we make must be reinvested for the benefit of the development of our standards and services. All of this is to create value for many users. That was a brief overview of GS1 globally and GS1 Sweden. Now we will dive into the main topic of today's webinar, which is GTIN. My colleague Stefan will now present it to you. Welcome, Stefan. Thank you very much. My name is Stefan Tillander. I work as a Customer Service Agent here at GS1 Sweden. I will talk to you a little about GTIN numbers. GTIN stands for Global Trade Item Number. Through our GS1 Company Prefix service, you can create unique GTIN numbers. GTIN is a global solution and a unique identifier for the entire supply chain. In this example, we are going to sell a bandage. To be able to identify the bandage, we will give it a GTIN. It is a globally unique item number used in all industries worldwide and also online. Once we have given this bandage its GTIN number, the same number should be used when selling the bandage at a pharmacy in Brazil or at a building supply store in Sweden, and also when selling it online. A GTIN number makes it possible to identify all items that can be priced, ordered or invoiced at all points along the supply chain. Wherever there is a need to retrieve predefined information. Having a unique identifier for construction products is crucial for maintaining the efficiency that stakeholders need in order to exchange product information consistently and ensure that supply chains run smoothly. Construction products usually have a long service life, and some of them are actively used for 50 or even 100 years. There are many external factors that can affect the use and value of a construction product over the course of its service life. Examples of such factors are construction methods, building regulations and knowledge of the properties of different materials in both the short and long term. For building owners and property managers, it has always been a challenge to know what is inside a building. With the rapid development of new materials, together with increased focus on sustainability and circularity, this has intensified the need for efficient tracking of construction products, their properties and their contents throughout the entire life cycle. Now I would like to talk to you about the different types of GTIN numbers. The most common GTIN number is GTIN-13, which consists of 13 digits, and it is also the number shown in all barcodes that need to pass through a checkout. There is also something called GTIN-14, which is used on packaging for transport and warehouse management. But a GTIN-14 cannot be scanned at a checkout. Then there is also something called a UPC number, Universal Product Code. It consists of 12 digits. Today, a UPC number is used in the North American market, meaning Mexico, the United States and Canada. But it has become more common for this market to handle GTIN-13 numbers as well. So if you are going to sell products in the North American market, check with your customers whether they can handle a GTIN-13 or 14. If they need a UPC number from you, you need to contact GS1 in the United States. That is the only GS1 organisation that can issue UPC numbers. And then there is also something called GTIN-8. It is used on very small packages where there is no room for a larger barcode. To be able to create GTIN numbers, you need to subscribe to a service from us called GS1 Company Prefix. This company prefix comes in different number capacities. There is a company prefix with 1,000 numbers. There is a company prefix with 10,000 numbers. And a company prefix with 100,000 numbers. If you have a shorter company prefix, you can create more GTIN-13 numbers, because it leaves room for a longer item reference. We will now start looking at these item references. In the first example, at the top, you can see how GTIN-13 is structured if you have a nine-digit company prefix. It starts with the company prefix, and then it is followed by the item reference, which consists of three digits. The item reference always runs in numerical order. This means that the very first item reference is three zeros. 0, 0, 0. The next one is then 0, 0, 1 followed by 0, 0, 2, and so on. The very last number that you create is therefore the one where the item reference is 9, 9, 9. The sequence of prefix and item reference always ends with a check digit. The check digit is not something you make up yourself; it is a mathematical calculation. It is like a verification that ensures the number sequence is correctly composed. So, the check digit is not something you calculate yourself; it is calculated by our system. Either in the customer portal under Generate numbers, or through Calculate check digit on our website if you are logged out. In short, the company prefix together with the item reference and the check digit make a total of 13 digits and form a unique GTIN-13 that is used to give a product a unique identifier. This example shows how a GTIN-13 is structured with a seven-digit company prefix. It starts with the company prefix, followed by the item reference, which is five digits, and ends with a check digit. This means that you can create 100,000 GTIN-13 numbers with a seven-digit company prefix. We have talked about the structure of a GTIN-13, so let us now move on to what GTIN-13 can identify. GTIN-13 is used to identify a consumer item, a product that is therefore meant to be scanned at a checkout. GTIN-13 can also be used to identify other levels. For example, a GTIN-13 can be used to identify a can of paint. A new GTIN-13 can be used to identify the carton in which 20 cans of paint will be transported. There will be 12 cartons on the pallet, and this pallet can also be identified with its own GTIN-13. So it is possible to use only GTIN-13 across all your levels, as long as you follow the standard of using a new GTIN-13 for each level. Now you may be thinking that this sounds like you will use up your GTIN-13 numbers quite quickly if you have to identify every level. That is why GTIN-14 exists. As we mentioned, there is something called GTIN-14, which consists of 14 digits. It is mainly used to identify packages that contain multiple products. Usually for transport and warehouse management. These cannot be scanned at a checkout. A GTIN-14 is structured in almost the same way as a GTIN-13, but has an indicator digit, also called a logistic variant. You can choose which indicator digit you want to use, from the digit 1 up to and including the digit 8. The digits 1 to 8 are used to create new GTIN-14s for different packaging levels of a product. So it is possible to create new GTIN-14s for up to eight packaging levels of the same product. Please note that indicator digit 9 should only be used for selling a variable weight item. Examples of variable weight items include meat, cheese, fruit and similar products. These are products that are weighed in stores, where the price depends on how much the product weighs. Let us take a closer look at the structure of a GTIN-14. It always starts with an indicator digit, also called a logistic variant. Followed by the company prefix, the item reference of the base product, and finally a check digit. The indicator digit has no specific meaning and does not need to be used in any particular order. The ability to create GTIN-14s is intended to provide extra numbering capacity in addition to the GTIN-13 numbers you can create within your prefix. Note that the item reference must be the same as the underlying consumer unit. Here we see an image of what it might look like, for example. The consumer package, which is the paint can, has a GTIN-13 where the item reference is 001. This means that the same item reference should continue to be used on the higher levels. It should be used on the carton and on the pallet. But as you can see, the indicator digit, the logistic variant, differs on each level. This means that there will be a new check digit and a new unique GTIN-14. Here is an example where you sell the same paint can but also sell it in a carton packed with 25 cans. This means a new GTIN-14 on both the carton and the pallet. What you do is give the carton with 25 cans a new indicator digit. The company prefix is the same and the item reference is the same, but the check digit changes. You also give the pallet a new indicator digit. Even though you still put 12 cartons on the pallet, this gives you 12 cartons with a new number of cans. In other words, it is not the same pallet as in example 1. So what happens if you use up all eight GTIN-14s for a product? Then you can start allocating GTIN-13s to your new levels. We showed that in an earlier example when we talked about GTIN-13. There are also guidelines for GTIN rules. We base this on our guidelines, which consist of three questions. Is a consumer or trading partner expected to be able to distinguish between a new and an older product? Is there a responsibility or disclosure obligation for the consumer or trading partner linked to the product that is regulated by law or another statute? Should the product be handled differently in the trade flow? For example, how it is shipped, stored or received? If the answer is yes to at least one of these three questions, you should change the GTIN number. What you should note is that there may be regulatory requirements in your industry that include additional restrictions and that must be followed. This may mean that you need to change GTIN more often. A brand owner has the right to change GTIN more often than the GTIN rules specify. If they themselves see a need for it, or if their customers or business partners do. To summarise, there may be regulatory requirements in your industry that include additional restrictions and that must be followed. A brand owner has the right to change GTIN more often than the GTIN rules require. If they themselves see a need for it, or if their customers or business partners do. And with that, I have finished talking about GTIN and will hand back to Lena, who will talk a little about item hierarchies. Thank you, Stefan! Now we will move on and go into item hierarchies. I thought we would start with a few concepts so we know what we are talking about. Within Vilma, we know that you talk about primary, secondary and tertiary packaging. Within GS1 item information, we use the terms base level, intermediate level and top level. And those are the terms we will use in the following slides. So if we start with the base level itself. It is the lowest level in the hierarchy. It must be identified with a GTIN. And it does not contain any other items identified with a GTIN. A base level can be included in another item, for example in a box or on a pallet. Examples of base levels can be a stud, a bag of charcoal or a bottle of glue. One level up, we find the intermediate level. An intermediate level contains other items that have been identified with GTINs, and is itself included one level up in an item that is identified with its own GTIN. An item at intermediate level can also contain other items at intermediate level, and we will look at some examples of that later. This could, for example, be a ten-pack of boards wrapped in shrink film. Another example could be six bottles of glue in a package. In an item hierarchy, there can be several intermediate levels, but sometimes there is no intermediate level at all. For example, the charcoal may have been placed directly on a pallet. Or it may be another large item that simply does not need to be handled with an intermediate level. At the very top of the hierarchy, we find the top level. A top level is identified with a GTIN and contains other items that are identified with GTINs. But the top level is the ceiling, so to speak. It is never included in another item. The top level is used when there is a top level for the item. Examples could be boxes of screws standing on a pallet. In that case, the pallet is the top level. Or a cable drum. One thing to keep in mind is that in an item hierarchy, you should identify what needs to be handled, so to speak. So in the image at the top, you can imagine that there is no need to identify the individual screw inside. In that case, you start with the box as the base level, the carton as the intermediate level, and then the cartons on the pallet. But if the screw needs to be identified, perhaps because it should be sold individually, or because you need to count it in some other way, then the screw needs to be the base level. Then in this example, we have two intermediate levels and then a pallet. So we will take a look at how this relates to the terms we use. Here is the first example. We have the box, a 100-pack of screws, we have 12 units in a carton and 20 cartons on a pallet. In this case, we see, if we connect this to what Stefan just talked about, that we have GTIN-13 on the box and on the carton. The box, the 100-pack, is the base level. It is also the consumer package in this example. The intermediate level is the outer packaging, the retail package. It goes by many names. It has its own item reference and then its own check digit. And then we have the pallet. Here we identify it with GTIN-14 and top level. In the second example, where we have the screw as the base level. GTIN-13 on that. Then we have the first intermediate level. The box, the 100-pack, then becomes an intermediate level. It is also a consumer package here. And therefore has its own GTIN-13 with its own item reference and then a check digit. This intermediate level, the box, is then packed in ten-packs in a carton. Here we have GTIN-14 in the example. And intermediate level. And then 20 of this carton stand on our top level, the pallet, in this example. So, a few basic principles to keep in mind. Each level that will be handled at some stage in the supply chain must have its own GTIN. Each level, or GTIN, then carries its own information, its item information. And only information about that level. So the base level carries information about the base level. The intermediate level carries information about the intermediate level, and the top level about the top level. So they are all separate. And then, to be able to share GS1 item information, which may be the next step for many of you here, the product must be identified with a GTIN. So that was a brief overview of what we wanted to cover regarding GTIN and hierarchies today. We will follow up this webinar with a demo of Validoo. There we will look at the data model for construction, and also look at how hierarchies and how we work with them in our systems. This is aimed especially at those of you active in the building materials trade. You will find the registration link here. It will also be included in the follow-up email. But please save 11 June, from 9 to 10. Stefan and my colleague Mischa will guide you through Validoo. That was everything we had for today. I hope you have learned something. Thank you for your time and for listening.