The beep of a supermarket scanner or the sight of those famous black and white lines on the sale tag of a piece of clothing is an everyday technology to modern society. However, it has been described as the most significant productivity improvement in the grocery industry since the introduction of the supermarket. Behind the Universal Product Code is the story of buyers and sellers, who are normally on opposite sides with conflicting interests, voluntarily cooperating to reduce costs across their industries while giving no competitive advantage to one company or industry. Few projects have matched its success in any industry.
In the late 1960s, companies involved in food distribution were faced with increasing costs, and lower profitability, that looked to interrupt or reverse the long term trend in the U.S. toward lower food prices for the consumer. A series of meetings between trade associations representing the two branches of the food distribution system culminated in September 1969 with a decision to seek a standard "interindustry product code" for the benefits it would bring. Four months later association heads in the grocery sector met at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC and decided to form a small committee of chief executive officers to focus on a universal product code. Its task would be to rise above political differences and give up special interests for the benefit of food distribution as a whole, the largest commercial sector in the nation at that time.
The Ad Hoc Committee, as it would come to be known, was composed of five grocery manufacturer executives and five executives from the retail distributor associations. The companies and associations involved volunteered the time of their executives and paid out-of-pocket expenses. Each committee member was invited to bring a technical expert, many of whom were key in the development of the code.*
The original Ad Hoc Committee, with the aid of McKinsey and Company, a consulting firm, researched a variety of questions the industry had about a code and came up with solid answers. It recommended the following:
- to adopt a code, but not solely for the purpose of optimizing code scan check out systems
- a 10-digit, all numeric mixed code with a check digit for keyed in codes as the most efficient design
- the code should be developed with scanning technology, tested in stores and implemented as soon as possible
On March 31, 1971, the Ad Hoc Committee created the Symbol Selection Subcommittee**. The subcommittee, chaired by Alan Haberman, executive vice president of First National Stores, was given the responsibility of finding a machine readable version of the symbol as specified by the Ad Hoc Committee. The symbol had to be a binary symbol that was readable from any direction and could be scanned with almost 100% accuracy. Also, the code had to withstand ice, stains, moisture and any other conditions a retail item may encounter.
The code that was accepted two years after the subcommittee's creation was today's familiar black and white bars. The subcommittee had weighed all options, looked at many different styles of machine readable codes and arrived at something that would change commerce forever.
*The original members of the Ad Hoc Committee and their technical experts were Burt Gookin, President of the H.J. Heinz Company and John Hayes, General Manager of Marketing Services; Art Larkin, CEO of General Foods and Bob Stringer, Vice President of Distribution; Bob Aders, Vice Chairman of the Kroger Company and Jack Strubbe, Vice President; J.P. MacFarland, CEO of General Mills and Tom Nelson, Vice President-Controller; Don Lloyd, President of Associated Food Stores of Salt Lake City; Gordon Ellis, President of Fairmont Foods and Bill Logan, Vice President of Administration; Gavin MacBain, Chairman of the Board of Bristol Myers and Fred Butler, Vice President of Operations; W.J. Kane, President of A & P; Earl Madsen, President of Madsen Enterprises; and James Wyman, President of Super Valu Stores.
**The members of the Symbol Selection Committee were Alan Haberman, Executive Vice President of First National Stores; John Hayes, General Manager of Marketing Services at the H.J. Heinz Company; Eric Waldbaum, President of Greenbelt Consumer Services; Bill Galt, Assistant Controller of Del Monte; Barry Franz, EDP Manager of Proctor & Gamble and various representatives from Winn-Dixie and General Foods.
