Registration Authority

ISO/IEC 15459 – Information Technology – Automatic identification and data capture techniques – Unique identification

This International Standard provides information on the identification of Issuing Agencies for conformance with ISO/IEC 15459 – Information Technology – Automatic identification and data capture techniques – Unique identification.

For a list of Issuing Agencies and their Codes, Download the Register of Issuing Agencies and their respective codes for ISO/IEC 15459. 
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To become an Issuing Agency (IA), Download the procedures and application. 

To obtain a copy of the standard ISO/IEC 15459, Visit the AIM Store.

Unique identification can occur at many different levels, at item level, on the transport unit, on the returnable transport item, at grouping levels, and elsewhere. Such entities are often handled by several parties, both public and private, throughout their life cycle. Each of these parties must be able to identify and trace such distinct entities so that reference can be made to associated information such as quality inspection data, the chemical substance contained, the batch or lot number of parts, components or raw materials, etc.

The associated information is typically held in some kind of database. The information can be accessed using EDI exchange or another appropriate access protocol, e.g. a directory access protocol.

There are considerable benefits if the identity of the entity is represented as a bar code or other AIDC (Automatic Identification and Data Capture) media and attached to or made a constituent part of that which is being uniquely identified so that

* it can be read electronically, thus minimizing errors;

* one identity for the same item can be used by all parties;

* each party can use the identity to look up the data associated with the entity. 

All AIDC technologies have the potential to encode an identity. It is expected that application standards, using various automatic identification technologies, will be developed based upon the identity as a prime key. These application standards, which can include additional rules for which level of identification should be used, are often made available from the Issuing Agency.