Overview of AIT Technologies 43
The developers of the UPC believed that there would be fewer than 10,000 companies in the
U.S. grocery industry, which would use the UPC. To the contrary, currently there are over 1 million
companies in more than 100 countries in over 20 different industry sectors enjoying the benets of
scanning because of the UPC. UPC symbols are everywhere in the retail environment. They can
also be found in industries as diverse as construction, utilities, and cosmetics. The UPC is exten-
sively used in the supply chain by the suppliers of raw materials, manufacturers, and distributors. At
the dawn of the twenty-rst century, the Uniform Code Council, Inc., the administrator of the UPC,
estimates that the U.P.C. symbol w ...