GRAI Example

The way to implement the Global Returnable Asset Identifier can be illustrated with the following example :

A blood transfusion center uses transport containers from different origins. This picture shows one of the 2 newest small transport container, bought from the Company A.

The blood transfusion center bought 12 months ago one large transport container from the same Company A.

At its origins, the blood transfusion center received 2 small transport container from a governmental organisation.

The three blue transport containers are listed in the Company A's catalogue with two different GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), as they have different specifications. For the blood transfusion center, the transport container are classified according their specifications; this means that the green containers are equivalent to the two newest blue container (because of their size and specifications). The larger container belongs to another category.

The blood transfusion center defines 'asset types' to the transport containers.
The smaller containers are classified first (asset type : 104), the larger container belongs to another asset type : 285.

Having defined the asset types and allocated the assets according this, the blood transfusion center has to identify each of the 4 transport containers corrresponding to the asset type 104 by given them a serial number (for example : A00001, A00002, etc.).

The large transport container is identified with its own GRAI, which differs from the smaller containers according the asset types defined by the blood transfusion center. In our example, we chose to give a serial number which had been given to one of the small containers; by using the GRAI, any confusion is excluded.