Because of their ability to provide globally unique identification of trade items, assets, logistic units, parties and locations, GS1 standards are particularly well suited to use for traceability purposes. To further develop GS1 capability to assist consumers, businesses and governments worldwide, GS1 members - suppliers and retailers across the world - have defined traceability as a business process and produced a Global Traceability Standard, which links it to enabling technologies and relevant GS1 System tools.

GS1 Global Traceability Standard (GTS)

The GS1 Global Traceability Standard (GTS) can help provide a single traceability process to comply with all quality and regulatory requirements. It ensures interoperability with trading partners, allowing for efficient recall or tracing of raw materials origin from upstream suppliers.  It is a business process standard describing the traceability process independently from the choice of enabling technologies. It defines minimum requirements for companies of all sizes across industry sectors and corresponding GS1 Standards used within information management tools.

The GS1 Global Traceability Standard (GTS) makes traceability systems possible on a global scale, for both small and large organisations, all along the supply chain, no matter how many companies are involved, no matter what enabling technologies (barcodes, RFID, EDI, Internet...) are chosen. Companies that manufacture consumer products invest considerable resources to establish the value of their brands and meet the needs of customers, regulations and efficiency in the supply chain. GS1 has developed a Global Traceability Programme to support their efforts. The GS1 GTC Programme aims at helping companies to implement traceability according to traceability best practices and GS1 global standards.

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GS1 Global Traceability Conformance Programme

The GS1 Global Traceability Conformance Programme (GS1 GTC ) has been developed to review Traceability Systems in place through a rigorous methodology supported by technical criteria and documentation. The GS1 Traceability Checklist is the perfect tool to verify the traceability system of a company and acts as a diagnosis to know if the GS1 System is correctly implemented among the company using the most adequate GS1 Standards (BarCodes,eCom, EPC, GDSN,).