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GS1

GS1 · Global identification standards for parties, locations, and products SIGNET support: Architectural alignment — identifier schemes

What it is

GS1 is the global standards organisation behind the identifiers that run physical commerce: the Global Location Number (GLN) for parties and places, the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) behind the barcode, and the wider system of keys that let supply-chain systems refer to the same entity unambiguously worldwide.

The standards are maintained by GS1. Official reference →

How SIGNET supports it

GS1 sits in SIGNET's architectural alignment tier, through the canonical Identifier object's scheme registry. The registry supports the GS1 Global Location Number as the gs1:gln scheme, so a party or location already identified in a supply-chain system can be referenced in a SIGNET network by exactly the identifier it already carries — no re-registration, no mapping table.

This reflects a deliberate pluralism in the identity model. Decentralised identifiers are RECOMMENDED for parties and agents, but SIGNET does not demand them: GLNs, GLEIF LEIs, and other established schemes are first-class, so networks bridge into the installed base of enterprise and supply-chain identification rather than requiring a migration before the first document flows. The scheme registry is extensible, and further GS1 keys are a natural candidate for extension under the change-proposal process as implementations need them.

Where it lives in the standard