Two pallets arrive at a distribution center carrying the same product but different production lots and expiration dates. The warehouse management system (WMS) identifies the SKU, records the quantity, and directs putaway. If the lot attributes are not captured or maintained, the inventory looks interchangeable even though it is not. That difference becomes material when a recall or expiration-date exception forces the operation to establish exactly what moved, where, and to whom.
GS1’s Sunrise 2027 initiative makes this an opportune time to revisit a familiar problem. Two-dimensional (2D) barcodes can put more information on the product, but greater data capacity does not automatically translate into better operational control. The strategic issue is what happens to the information after the scan, as products cross packaging lines, receiving docks, inventory systems, and trading-partner boundaries.
A Retail Milestone, Not a Warehouse Mandate
Sunrise 2027 is an industry milestone aimed at enabling retail point-of-sale systems to read and process GS1-compliant 2D barcodes by the end of 2027. At a minimum, those systems need to extract the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) for price lookup. It is not a requirement to retire UPC symbols in 2027, nor does it impose a corresponding scanning deadline on general warehousing or transportation operations. Linear and 2D codes will coexist during the transition.
There is a second distinction that tends to disappear in discussions of the new technology. Logistics organizations already use GS1-128 linear barcodes to encode lot numbers, dates, and other attributes, while Serial Shipping Container Codes (SSCCs) identify logistics units. Two-dimensional symbols, including GS1 DataMatrix and QR codes using GS1 Digital Link, offer greater capacity and different ways to connect physical products with digital information. They do not invent the concept of product traceability.
This evolution builds on a broader movement toward more connected product identification. As discussed in GS1’s New RFID Standard Makes Supply Chain Data Web-Native, the industry is increasingly concerned with linking physical identification to standardized information that enterprise applications can interpret and exchange. Barcode technology and RFID address different identification requirements, but both raise the same architectural question: how does information associated with a physical object become useful across multiple systems and organizations?
What changes with wider adoption of 2D barcodes is the potential reach of richer identification. More products may arrive carrying attributes that previously required a separate label, a different transaction, or information from a trading partner. For technology buyers, the question is whether their systems can use those attributes without slowing the operation or creating another disconnected data stream.
Where the Information Chain Breaks
The first dependency is manufacturing. Dynamic lot and date information must be associated with the correct product, encoded accurately, and printed well enough to survive handling. Videojet, a supplier of industrial coding and marking technology, addresses the printing and verification problem in its guidance on Sunrise 2027. A barcode that passes a demonstration but fails consistently at production speed is not a supply chain improvement.
A different part of the problem is consistency across facilities and markets. Loftware’s GS1 Digital Link and enterprise labeling capabilities address the control of label templates, identification data, and packaging workflows. That can reduce variation in how information is applied, but it does not establish that an ERP or WMS will preserve the underlying attributes once goods move downstream.
The transition itself presents complications at the scanner. Many products will temporarily carry a conventional barcode alongside a 2D symbol. Zebra Technologies offers 123Scan configurations for handling barcode capture, including settings designed to avoid duplicate data transmission when multiple symbols are present. An upgrade that captures richer data but introduces duplicate transactions has simply exchanged one weakness for another.
The most demanding handoff often comes at the receiving dock. A retailer may scan an individual product, while a distributor receives and moves inventory by case or pallet. The WMS must know which lot attributes belong to which inventory records and how those relationships change during replenishment, picking, and shipping. Electronic shipment records and SSCCs may provide a more practical connection at the logistics-unit level than scanning every consumer item.
This reflects a broader data-quality issue LV has examined in RFID Creates Value Only When Physical Reads Become Trusted Business Events. A physical identification event becomes valuable when it can be trusted, associated with the correct business transaction, and used by operational applications. The 2D barcode transition presents a related challenge, with the added complexity of carrying product-specific attributes through multiple inventory and packaging levels.
The Business Case Lives in the Exceptions
The strongest case for richer product data is not that a company can scan more characters. It is that employees can resolve particular operating exceptions with less disruption. When a product lot is recalled, dependable receiving and shipment records can narrow the search for affected inventory. Without them, the investigation becomes an exercise in reconstructing movements across systems and paper trails.
Expiration-date control is another example. Correctly maintained date and lot attributes can support first-expired, first-out allocation, but only when inventory rules and physical execution follow the same logic. At retail, SATO’s Dynamic Pricing Solution uses GS1 DataMatrix information to support expiration-based inventory visibility and markdown decisions. That is an identifiable use case; it is not proof that 2D labeling by itself reduces food waste or improves margins in every deployment.
There is also a cost to capturing information. A distribution center that receives thousands of cases per hour should be skeptical of an approach requiring unnecessary item-level scans. More transactions can increase labor, integration complexity, and processing overhead. Buyers should compare exception-handling hours, recall investigation times, inventory losses, and data accuracy with the full cost of printers, scanners, software changes, and process redesign.
This is an architecture decision with an economic test attached. The right level of identification is the level that improves an actual business decision, not necessarily the most granular level the technology permits.
What Supply Chain Leaders Should Test
A sensible pilot begins with a problem, not a barcode format. For a food distributor, that might be preventing an expiring lot from being overlooked. For a manufacturer, it could be tracing serialized components. For a third-party logistics provider, it may be receiving products from multiple suppliers without introducing exceptions into the WMS.
The pilot should follow the same products through coding, labeling, receipt, storage, order fulfillment, and shipment. It should establish whether the intended attributes were captured correctly, retained through every relevant transaction, and retrievable during a simulated exception. Performance should be measured against the current process, including any throughput penalty from added scans.
The underlying challenge is consistent with LV’s earlier analysis in Supply Chain Modernization Is Increasingly an Integration Program. Improving the capability of an individual technology component does not necessarily improve end-to-end execution. The business value emerges when identification, inventory records, transaction processing, and decision-making operate as a connected system.
The suppliers discussed here illustrate different parts of that technology chain. None independently solves the problem, and vendor capability should not be confused with proof of a particular deployment outcome. The organization still has to define the data ownership, process logic, and system interfaces that turn product identification into operational control.
Sunrise 2027 gives retail technology a useful milestone, but it also exposes a more general supply chain weakness. Companies may discover that the missing capability was never the ability to read the information. It was the ability to keep that information connected to inventory as the physical product moved. The barcode can carry the data; the supply chain still has to carry the meaning.
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