44 DC VELOCITY JULY 2014 www.dcvelocity.com
t
ec
hnol
ogyr
ev
i
ew
tent file. That can happen when small
suppliers who don’t have their own prefix
borrow another company’s unique identifier just for shipping, creating confusion
for the receiver, Verb says. “We see a collision issue every week on the ownership
of a UPC code because it does not belong
to them,” he reports.
Another common cause of data issues
is the proliferation of stock-keeping units.
When companies introduce a large number of new products, they sometimes fail
to create a “carton content” file for each
of the items. As a result, the warehouse
receiving the new items cannot verify
them, resulting in a fine to the supplier.
Simple data encoding errors can also
cause problems. An error could result
from something as seemingly minor as
failure to include a digit. Another common error results from the use of old
assigned numbers. In the past, all company prefixes were six-digit numbers; but
now, many have nine digits. Verb reports
that companies sometimes use the old
six-digit prefix rather than the nine-digit
one, causing the receiver’s system to reject
the code.
BOTCHED PROMOTIONS
When it comes to data quality errors,
the potential consequences aren’t limited
to noncompliance penalties and fines.
There are opportunity costs as well, says
Bushnell. That’s because when a mislabeled shipment arrives at a DC, it can be
quarantined until the issue gets straightened out. For a supplier that has launched
a special promotion for a new product,
the quarantine can undermine the sales
initiative, creating a lost opportunity. “A
company is taking time to promote the
product and then the consumer can’t buy
it because of the quarantine,” Bushnell
notes.
To prevent that type of problem,
Bushnell urges logistics managers to make
upper management aware of the potential
consequences of bar-code data errors.
“We see a huge disconnect between senior
management and logistics management
on this issue,” he says. “This is such a
simple and fundamental problem that
everybody assumes that this has been
taken care of.” ;
label, which is affixed to cartons.
To streamline the receiving pro-
cess, a distribution center needs such
information on incoming cartons as
the box’s dimensions and the prod-
uct weight. That information is usu-
ally contained in the carton’s “con-
tent file,” and the SSCC code links to
that file. The supplier typically sends
the carton’s content file to the receiv-
er electronically as part of the ASN.
Of course, in the real world, things
don’t always go according to plan.
For example, data issues sometimes
arise when the SSCC bar code isn’t
properly linked to the carton’s con-
