Introduction
EAN is designed by the International Article Numbering Association (EAN)
in Europe. It is an extension to UPC-A to include
the country information. The only difference between UPC-A and EAN-13 is
that the number system in UPC-A is a single digit from 0 through 9 whereas
an EAN-13 number system consists of two digits ranging form 00 to 99.
EAN-13 encodes 12 digits of numeric data along with a trailing check
digit, for a total of 13 digits of barcode data.
Structure of an EAN number
An EAN-13 number consists of four areas: (1) The number System; (2)The
manufacturer code; (3) the product code; (4)The check digit. Normally the
number system digit is printed to the left of the barcode, and the check
digit to the right. The manufacturer and product codes are printed just
below the barcode, separated by the guard bar.
Number System. The number system is the first two digits in the
EAN
number to identify the country/region numbering authority. The number
system list is maintained by EAN organization (http://www.ean-int.org).
Manufacturer Code. The manufacturer code is a unique code
assigned to each manufacturer by the numbering authority indicated by the
number system code. All products produced by a given company will use the
same manufacturer code.
EAN uses what is called "variable-length manufacturer codes." Assigning
fixed-length 5-digit manufacturer codes, as the UCC has done until
recently, means that each manufacturer can have up to 99,999 product
codes--and many manufacturers don't have that many products, which means
hundreds or even thousands of potential product codes are being wasted on
manufacturers that only have a few products. Thus if a potential
manufacturer knows that it is only going to produce a few products, EAN may
issue it a longer manufacturer code, leaving less space for the product
code. This results in more efficient use of the available manufacturer and
product codes. Product Code: The product code is a unique code assigned by
the manufacturer.
Product Code. The product code is assigned by the manufacturer.
The product code immediately follows manufacturer code. The total length of
manufacturer code plus product code must be exact 10 digits.
Check Digit: The check digit is used to verify that the barcode
is generated or scanned correctly. The check digit is calculated based on
the rest of the barcode digits.
The nominal X dimension is 13 mils. The printable X dimension
ranges from 10.4 to 24 mils.
Variants
JAN: Japan's numbering system is 49. The EAN numbers with numbering
system 49 are called JAN.
Bookland: The bookland barcode is an EAN-13 barcode that follows a
specific format used exclusively with books (all bookland barcodes start
with 978, the barcode illustrated at the beginning of this article is
a bookland barcode). For more information about
ISBN and bookland, click here.
Check Digit Calculation
EAN check digit is calculated using standard Mod10 method. Here
outlines the steps to calculate EAN-13 check digit:
- From the right to left, start with odd position, assign the odd/even
position to each digit.
- Sum all digits in odd position and multiply the
result by 3.
- Sum all digits in even position.
- Sum the results of step 3 and step 4.
- divide the result of step 4 by 10. The check digit is the number
which adds the remainder to 10.
A web-based free utility to calculate EAN-13 check digit can be found
here.
Encoding
A EAN-13 symbol can be divided into two halves, each consisting of six
digits separated by a center guard bar pattern. The whole symbol is surrounded by two guard bar patterns. The same digit has different
encoding depends whether it is in the left halve or in the right
halve. The encoding pattern for digits in the left halve always starts with
a space while the one for digits in the right halve always start with
a bar and ends with a space.
A EAN-13 symbol has the following structure:
- Start guard bars, always with a pattern bar+space+bar.
- Left halve, six digits encoded using the encoding schema A or
B;
- Center guard bars, with a pattern space+bar+space+bar+space.
- Right halve, six digits encoded using the encoding
schema C.
- Stop guard bars, always with a pattern bar+space+bar.
Web Tool
At barcode knowledge library we provide free web-based utilities for
readers to calculate check digits, performing number conversions. To
calculate EAN-13 check digit, refer to this page. If you have
purchased Morovia UPC/EAN/Bookland Font, you may consider checking out
this
page for additional utilities for character mapping.
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