The cost of owning a weapon system exceeds by far its initial purchase cost, since additional expenditures need to be taken into account, such as acquisition of spare parts to maintain the system operational through its lifecycle. It has been stated that the initial investment for the acquisition of a weapon system represents less than 25% of the total expenses required for maintenance purposes.

This disproportional relationship, coupled with the continuous shrinkage of defence budgets, highlights the need for efficient Logistics. Logistics, as a professional discipline, can be described as "the application of engineering, operational and managerial skills to provide a product with prerequisite quality, reliability, maintainability and supportability, and to sustain safe and cost effective utilisation of that product for its intended purpose throughout its projected service life".

The core of Logistics is strongly correlated and driven from efficient identification of equipment. The latter is performed through sophisticated systems which were specifically designed to uniquely identify and classify materiel. Two of those, the NATO Codification System (NCS) and the GS1 Global Office scheme (GS1 ) were built for the same purpose, but follow different patterns in terms of materiel recognition.

Following an initiative derived from discussions with the NATO Continuous Acquisition and Lifecycle Support (CALS) office, the Group of National Directors on Codification, AC/135, was requested to undertake a study with a view to examine the feasibility of linking the two systems. For this reason a Working Group comprising of participants from the two communities analysed different scenarios, and finally established a linkage between the NCS and the GS1 . Furthermore, it has been well understood throughout the meetings, that there is a definite need for an "awareness course" for Logisticians, who should in turn profit from the generated advantages.