ATLANTA – ECIA's Global Industry Practices Committee has launched a five-year review of its 2-D Barcode Specification, which published its last revision in 2018 to continue guiding the industry on the use and value of this technology for product identification labeling.

Concurrent with the publication of the specification, ECIA launched new initiatives to promote the use of this technology throughout the electronic component channel, and over the last decade, there has been widespread adoption, substantially improving the efficiency of the end-to-end order process.

The five-year review process began on May 11, and consists of reviewing and updating the entire 44-page document line by line. The SME (Subject Matter Expert) work group includes nearly 20 companies representing a broad range of ECIA member component distributors and manufacturers. They will meet bi-weekly until the task is complete. Once the specification is updated, it will be submitted to ECIA’s standards team to convert the specification into an official industry standard.

“ECIA’s 2-D Barcode Specification has now been widely adopted by the industry because it dramatically improves the efficiency of the end-to-end order process. But a lot has happened in the last five years and it’s important to keep this document current,” said ECIA Vice President of Industry Practices Don Elario. “After applying requirement changes, industry best practices and reaching the international adoption levels we have, it’s now time we convert this labeling specification to an ECIA (EIA) standard.”

To learn more about the initiative, visit https://www.ecianow.org/2d-barcode-labeling or contact Don Elario at delario@ecianow.org.