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The European Article Numbering
system (EAN) is a superset of UPC and was initially
introduced in 1977 by an EAN association of EEC countries
that included France, Germany, England, Belgium, Luxembourg,
Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy,
Holland and Austria. In 1978, Japan and Spain joined.
In 1989 Australia joined also.
 Today
many other countries joined, and EAN-13 is used worldwide
for marking retail goods. It encodes 13 characters:
the first two to three digits are flag characters which
represent a country code, followed by 10 data digits
and a checksum.
EAN has two versions, EAN-13 and EAN-8, encoding 13
and 8 digits respectively.
An EAN-13 symbol contains the number of bars as UPC
Version A, but encodes a 13 digit from the character
set pattern of the left-hand 6 digits, in the same manner
as the encodation of the check digit in a UPC Version
E symbol.
- The first two digits contain the
county where the article is made. For example the
numbers 40-43 are for Germany.
- The next five digits show the producer
of the article.
- The next five digits are the article
number which is given by the producer.
- The last digit is the check digit.
In the sample code shown above the check digit is
8. There is no need to calculate the check digit because
ActiveBarcode does this for you automatically.
Each country has a coding authority
(or numbering association) which assigns codes to manufacturers
and maintains a central database. The Uniform Code Council,
based in Dayton, Ohio, administers the UPC system for
the United States. In Canada, administration is carried
out by the Product Code Council of Canada, which is
based in Toronto, Ontario.
The EAN system is under the overall direction of the
International Article Numbering Association, based in
Brussels, Belgium. Each country using the EAN system
maintains a separate Article Numbering Association.
Advantages of using the EAN code:
- No need to label all articles with
the price. The price is stored in the database and
can be accessed via the barcode number. For customers
the price is only needed once where the article is
stored in the supermarket.
- It is fast and safe because there
is no way to make a mistake.
Calculating the check digit for the EAN code:
The check digit for the EAN code is calculated automatically
by our barcode software.
But if you need to understand the way it is calculated,
here is an example for a EAN-13 number.
The way to calculate the EAN-8 check digit is done in
the same way - only there are fewer digits:
EAN-Number: 4 007630 00011
check digit: unknown at this time
Digits: 4 0 0 7 6 3 0 0 0 0 1 1
Multiply with 1 3 1 3 1 3 1 3 1 3 1 3
Results 4 0 0 21 6 9 0 0 0 0 1 3 Total = 44
Divide by 10: 44/10 = 4 remainder 4
To find check digit: 10 - remainder = check digit
Check digit: 6
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