TL Ashford Preps For Looming 2D Barcode Mandate
February 24, 2025 Alex Woodie
The humble barcode traces its roots to 1974, when a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum was scanned into a System/370 mainframe at a market in Marsh, Ohio. Fast forward 51 years, and the retail industry is on the cusp of requiring a new generation of two-dimensional barcodes. TL Ashford is preparing to help IBM i shops comply with industry mandates around 2D barcodes, as well as to find creative ways to exploit the vast new data they contain.
The original Universal Product Code (UPC) barcode is composed of 30 vertical lines of varying width, which is sufficient for storing 95 bits of data using binary code, according to IBM’s informative history of the UPC. The 12 digits encoded in each UPC is enough to differentiate billions of different consumer products, which are registered as Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) by GS1, the non-profit organization created in 1974 to oversee the UPC rollout.
The UPC barcode was a technological breakthrough that enabled greater efficiencies at checkout stands around the world for half a century. But times have changed, and customers and companies both demand more information. To convey more data, one-dimensional UPC barcodes are being supplemented or replaced by 2D barcodes that can store several thousand bytes of data.
Examples of 2D barcodes. Left to right: DataMatrix, QR Code, and PDF 417.
2D barcodes aren’t necessarily new, as many types have been created over the years. One of the earliest was PDF (Portable Data File) 417, which traces its roots to 1991. PDF417 has been widely adopted, including with the United States Postal Service, where it’s used for postage. It’s also used for airline boarding passes as well as for Real ID-compliant identification cards.
UPS has also created its own 2D barcode called MaxiCode that it uses for tracking parcels. Another 2D barcode, called Aztec Code, was created back in 1995, and has seen adoption in transportation.
But the two 2D barcodes that have gained the most traction, and are poised to become standards, are QR Code and Data Matrix. These barcode types are currently being used in various ways, including product URLs, tracking information, and even expiration dates.
John Young, a tech support specialist at IBM i barcode software company TL Ashford, says these new 2D barcodes open up the world of “dynamic data” to manufacturers and retailers.
“The dynamic data that’s going to be coming with these QR Codes or Data Matrix codes will include things like traceability, like lot numbers and batch numbers,” he said. They can contain links to websites for information about allergens or recipes, while retailers and regulators also demand greater trackability of products thanks to lot-level tracing.
One big use case for 2D codes is the inclusion of expiration date. If the food you buy at a store has passed its expiration date, it could alert you at the point of sale (POS) system to that fact. “So not only have you helped the store, you protected the customer,” Young tells IT Jungle in a recent interview.
UPS created its own 2D barcode, the MaxiCode (left) while the Aztec Code (right) has been adopted in transportation.
2D barcodes have different strengths and weaknesses. QR Codes and Data Matrix encode data along the horizontal and vertical axes, while PDF417 is a stacked linear barcode. While PDF417 is widely adoption across government, manufacturing, and healthcare, it can be “a little more unwieldy” to use compared to newer 2D symbologys, Young says. It takes four times as much area as QR Codes and Data Matrix codes to encode the same amount of data, and can be more difficult to scan at a distance.
QR Codes and Data Matrix codes can also be embedded into products, not just printed onto paper, which gives them another advantage, Young says. Companies can also embed multiple matrixes of data into the Data Matrixes, which gives it more redundancy in case part of the label gets damaged, he says.
Companies in the consumer goods supply chain will need to adopt one of the 2D barcode types as part of the GS1’s Sunrise 2027 initiative. GS1 currently has standards for five 2D barcodes, but it’s primarily focused on the QR Code (which it calls the GS1 Digital Link URI) and Data Matrix (GS1 DataMatrix). Store POS systems will need to be able to scan both traditional UPC codes as well as a 2D code (at least for price lookups) by the end of 2027.
TL Ashford’s Barcode400 software can generate all types of 2D barcodes.
TL Ashford is gearing up to its IBM i customers get ready for Sunrise 2027, and to educate them about the potential uses of 2D barcodes. The company has been serving the barcode needs of the IBM midrange world for 40 years, and Sunrise 2027 is now driving demand for 2D capabilities with its barcode labeling software for IBM i, called Barcode400.
Young recently started a new blog on the TL Ashford website called “The Future of Bar Coding.” The first goal of the series is to inform customers about the looming requirements for 2D barcodes as part of Sunrise 2027. Young also hopes to tap into the creativity of his customers and colleagues, such as director of marketing Michael Schuett, to explore potential uses of 2D barcodes that might not be directly obvious.
For instance, what if 2D barcode scanning could be integrated with an augmented reality device to help warehouse operators read labels? Instead of bringing products down from the tops of shelves and scanning them by hand, such a setup could potentially give an operator the capability to pick one barcode out of several on a screen, thereby saving time and effort. So called “smart shelves” that can automatically detect and read barcodes in retail stores could also provide a much-needed productivity boost in this notoriously competitive field.
“That’s the fun part of this,” Schuett says, “just exploring these new ideas to kind of throw them out there to our customers and see what they might use. And of course, to be on top of it for our company and our product. People know what might be out there.”
Young and Schuett plan to write several more blog posts on dynamic data and 2D barcodes over the course of 2025. Some IBM i shops in affected industries aren’t aware of the changes that are taking place with barcodes. There are no planned penalties for companies that aren’t ready for 2D barcodes as part of the Sunrise 2027 initiative, so the focus is more about education and exploring new ideas.
“Data is the big frontier. Everybody’s trying to jump into it and see what all they can do,” Young says. “So much of what we’re seeing in these different technologies, if you think about them as the peaks, the new heights – well, the basic data itself and creating these types of labels and barcodes, that’s the foundation that’s all built on. We hope we have a strong foundation to help these people build off of.”
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