As previously mentioned, early RFID tags were only encoded
with a 64-bit "license tag" number, and many tags are still so
encoded. However, when it became clear that some tags would
be used similar to barcodes-to identify manufactured items-
a standards committee was formed to establish a uniform formatting
for tag ID data. The organizations responsible for the
successful establishment of Universal Product Code (UPC)
were the Uniform Code Council (UCC) in the United States
and European Article Numbering (EAN) International. The
organization responsible for the international establishment of
Electronic Product Codes (EPC) for RFID tags is EPCglobal, a
joint venture of the UCC and EAN International. RFID tag
numbering has, therefore, become an extension of EAN, the
international version of the UPC.

The complete organization for use of EPCglobal is called the
EPCglobal Network that consists of the following elements:

• EPC - the electronic product code, a number designed
  to uniquely identify a particular item in the supply
  chain
• ONS - the object name service, which tells the computer
  systems where to locate information on the network
  about the object carrying an EPC
• PML - the physical markup language, which is used as
  a common language in the EPCglobal Network to
  define data on physical objects
• Savant - a softwaresystem that manages and moves
  information.

EPC is the successor to barcodes for product identification. Barcodes
have limitations, such as

• They require line-of-sight for scanning,
• They have limited encoding capacity, and
• They cannot receive and store information.

However, more than one million firms in more than 140 countries
currently use barcodes across more than 23 industries.
Barcode labels are inexpensive to print, are often included in
product packaging at no incremental cost, and can be read by
all modern point-of-sale machines. Since barcodes will always
be less expensive to deploy than EPCs, both will coexist for
many years to come.

The EPC is a simple, compact "license plate" that uniquely
identifies objects (items, cases, pallets, locations, etc.) in the
supply chain. The EPC builds around a basic hierarchical idea
that can be used to express a wide variety of different, existing
numbering systems. EPC numbers can accommodate all EAN/
UCC keys, including Global Trade Identification Number
(GTIN), Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC), Global Location
Number (GLN), Global Returnable Asset Identifier
(GRAI), and Global Individual Asset Identifier (GIAI).

Like many current numbering schemes used in commerce, the
EPC is divided into numbers that identify the manufacturer
and product type. In addition, the EPC uses an extra set of digits,
a serial number, to identify unique items. The EPC is the
key to the information on its associated product that exists in
the EPCglobal Network. An EPC number contains the following
items:

• Header - identifies the length, type, structure, version
  and generation of EPC
• EPC Manager - identifies the company or company
  entity
• Object Class - similar to a stock keeping unit or SKU
• Serial Number - specific instance of the Object Class
  being tagged

Additional fields may also be used as part of the EPC to properly
encode and decode information from different numbering
systems into their native (human-readable) forms.

EPC Manager numbers, issued by EPCglobal, are required for
companies that engage with trading partners outside of the
four walls of their internal operations. EPCglobal Networkcompliant
software and hardware utilize EPCglobal standard
data protocols, thus requiring the use of an EPC Manager
number.