EPCglobal is a joint venture between GS1 (formerly known as EAN International) and GS1 US (formerly the Uniform Code Council, Inc.). It is an organization set up to achieve world-wide adoption and standardization of Electronic Product Code (EPC) technology in an ethical and responsible way.

The main focus of the group currently is to create both a world-wide standard for RFID and the use of the Internet to share data via the EPCglobal Network.

EPCglobal's board of governors includes representatives from EPCglobal, GS1, Auto-ID Labs, Cisco Systems, DHL/Exel Supply Chain, Haier Group Company, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, LG Electronics, Lockheed Martin Corporation, METRO AG, Novartis Pharma AG, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Procter & Gamble, Sony Corporation, The Dow Chemical Company and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

History

EPCglobal was formed in October, 2003 as the successor organization to the MIT Auto-ID Center, the original creator of the EPC technology. EPCglobal manages the EPC network and standards, while its sister organization, Auto-ID Labs, manages and funds research on the EPC technology.

Introduction

EPC Information Services (EPCIS) is an EPCglobal standard designed to enable EPC-related data sharing within and across enterprises. This data sharing is aimed at enabling participants in the EPCglobal Network to obtain a common view of the disposition of EPC-bearing objects within a business context. The initial version of the EPCIS standard was ratified on April 12, 2007 and provided basic capability that meets the requirements of a set of use cases that the EPCglobal community identified as a minimal useful set. As such, the EPCIS standard can be used by any application in any industry. However, the standard supports extensibility so end users and industry groups can address specific application and industry use cases through industry and custom extensions or companion specifications.

The EPCIS standard defines standard interfaces to enable EPC-related data to be captured and subsequently to be queried using a set of service operations and an associated data model. The capture and query of EPC-related data will typically involve the use of persistent databases, though application-to-application sharing can occur without persistent databases. The standard specifies only the interfaces between applications that capture EPC-related data and those that need access to it. It does not specify how the service operations or databases themselves should be implemented. The interfaces enable interoperability while the implementations allow for competition.

Relationship to the EPCglobal Architecture Framework

EPCIS differs from elements at the lower layers of the EPCglobal Architecture in three key respects:
1. EPCIS deals explicitly with historical data. The lower layers of the stack deal exclusively with real-time processing of EPC data.
2. EPCIS often deals not just with raw EPC observations, but with observations that include meaning relative to the physical world and to specific business steps and business processes. The lower layers of the stack are purely observational in nature.
3. EPCIS typically operates and exists in a more diverse IT environment than the lower levels of the EPCglobal Architecture. This is due to a combination of factors including the desire to share EPCIS data between enterprises that are likely to have different solutions, the persistent nature of EPCIS data, and to EPCIS being the natural point of entry into other enterprise systems.