UNSPSC
Encyclopedia
The United Nations Standard Products and Services Code (UNSPSC) is a taxonomy
of products and services for use in eCommerce. It is a five-level hierarchy coded as an 8-digit number.
Corporation in 1998 and is currently managed by GS1 US
, which is responsible for overseeing code change requests, revising the codes and issuing regularly scheduled updates to the code, as well as managing special projects and initiatives.
(UNDP) and on November 1, 1998 by Lawrence M. Barth, a Vice President of the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. The development of the first version was overseen by Peter R. Benson, who was also responsible for the design and development of the code management procedure as a modification of the Delphi statistical forecasting method. The process allowed for the rapid development of consensus without dominance or influence.
The ECCMA, a non-profit membership association, was formed in 1999 to manage and promote the UNSPSC until March of 2003, with the release of version 6.0315. The UNDP then appointed GS1 US
as code manager in May 2003 and ECCMA develops the ECCMA Open Technical Dictionary (eOTD) and the international standards ISO 22745 and ISO 8000
.
, French
, German
, Spanish
, Italian
, Japanese
, Korean
, Dutch
, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese
, Danish
, Norwegian
, Swedish
, and Hungarian
. PDF versions of the codeset are available for free download. A version in Microsoft Excel
format is available to members, who can also request changes and suggest additions to the code.
The UNSPSC for a given item is composed of five two-digit identifiers, which together categorize the item into a five-level hierarchy. The five levels of the classification are "Segment", "Family", "Class", "Commodity", and "Business Function". Business Function is optional.
Taxonomy
Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...
of products and services for use in eCommerce. It is a five-level hierarchy coded as an 8-digit number.
Governance
The UNSPSC was jointly developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Dun & BradstreetDun & Bradstreet
Dun & Bradstreet is a Fortune 500 public company headquartered in Short Hills, New Jersey, USA that provides information on businesses and corporations for use in credit decisions, B2B marketing and supply chain management...
Corporation in 1998 and is currently managed by GS1 US
GS1 US
GS1 US is the GS1 Member Organization in the United States of America. It was formerly the Uniform Code Council, Inc.GS1 US is responsible for managing the GS1 System in the USA. GS1 US assigns GS1 Company Prefixes to companies/organizations in the USA...
, which is responsible for overseeing code change requests, revising the codes and issuing regularly scheduled updates to the code, as well as managing special projects and initiatives.
History
The UNSPSC was created upon the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding signed on September 29, 1998 by John S. Svendsen, the director of the Inter-agency Procurement Services Office (IAPSO) of the United Nations Development ProgrammeUnited Nations Development Programme
The United Nations Development Programme is the United Nations' global development network. It advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP operates in 177 countries, working with nations on their own solutions to...
(UNDP) and on November 1, 1998 by Lawrence M. Barth, a Vice President of the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. The development of the first version was overseen by Peter R. Benson, who was also responsible for the design and development of the code management procedure as a modification of the Delphi statistical forecasting method. The process allowed for the rapid development of consensus without dominance or influence.
The ECCMA, a non-profit membership association, was formed in 1999 to manage and promote the UNSPSC until March of 2003, with the release of version 6.0315. The UNDP then appointed GS1 US
GS1 US
GS1 US is the GS1 Member Organization in the United States of America. It was formerly the Uniform Code Council, Inc.GS1 US is responsible for managing the GS1 System in the USA. GS1 US assigns GS1 Company Prefixes to companies/organizations in the USA...
as code manager in May 2003 and ECCMA develops the ECCMA Open Technical Dictionary (eOTD) and the international standards ISO 22745 and ISO 8000
ISO 8000
ISO 8000, Data quality, is an ISO standard under development. It will be published as a number of separate documents, which ISO calls "parts"....
.
Current code
The current version consists of more than 50000 terms. The codeset is available in EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, and Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
. PDF versions of the codeset are available for free download. A version in Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
format is available to members, who can also request changes and suggest additions to the code.
The UNSPSC for a given item is composed of five two-digit identifiers, which together categorize the item into a five-level hierarchy. The five levels of the classification are "Segment", "Family", "Class", "Commodity", and "Business Function". Business Function is optional.
Example
- Segment 44. Office Equipment and Accessories and Supplies.
- Family 10. Office machines and their supplies and accessories.
- Class 15. Duplicating machines.
- Commodity 01. Photocopiers.
- Business Function 14. Retail.
- Commodity 01. Photocopiers.
- Class 15. Duplicating machines.
- Family 10. Office machines and their supplies and accessories.
Industrial products and services categorization standards
- eCl@ssEclasseCl@ss is a product classification and description standard for information exchange between customers and their suppliers.eCl@ss is a de facto standard within the German energy industry, but competes with UNSPSC in the United States. In 2006 eCl@ss joined forces with ETIM, which is an important...
- eOTDEOTDeOTD is the acronym for the ECCMA Open Technical Dictionary. The dictionary is a language-independent database of concepts with associated terms, definitions and images used to unambiguously describe individuals, organizations, locations, goods, services, processes, rules, and regulations...
- ETIMETIM (standard)ETIM Deutschland e. V. is an initiative to standardize the electronic exchange of product data for electrical and electronic products to enable the electronic trading of these products...
- RosettaNetRosettaNetRosettaNet is a non-profit consortium aimed at establishing standard processes for the sharing of business information . RosettaNet is a consortium of major Computer and Consumer Electronics, Electronic Components, Semiconductor Manufacturing, Telecommunications and Logistics companies working to...
- UNSPSC
See also
- Data Universal Numbering SystemData Universal Numbering SystemThe Data Universal Numbering System, abbreviated as DUNS or D-U-N-S, is a system developed and regulated by Dun & Bradstreet , that assigns a unique numeric identifier, referred to as a "DUNS number" to a single business entity. It was introduced in 1963 to support D&B's credit reporting practice....
(DUNS) - North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
- Point codePoint CodeAn SS7 point code is similar to an IP address in an IP network. It is a unique address for a node , used in MTP layer 3 to identify the destination of a message signal unit ....
- Standard Industrial ClassificationStandard Industrial ClassificationThe Standard Industrial Classification is a United States government system for classifying industries by a four-digit code. Established in 1937, it is being supplanted by the six-digit North American Industry Classification System , which was released in 1997; however certain government...
(SIC)