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The costs of translation were of Icelandic proportions. In the early 1970s, members of the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) set about tackling this problem. The result was a Uniform Product Code (UPC), a common standard for recording the identity of products. The UPC was launched in 1974, at first for retail products, using barcode technology. It immediately took off. By 1977, the UPC had become a global standard for retail products. During the 1980s and 1990s, this UPC technology extended its reach along the supply chain. It did so by developing a system for locating products as well as identifying them. A Global Location Number (GLN) was introduced in 1980, tying products to fixed locations. And in 1989, the Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) was devised, enabling products to be grouped in transit. These common data standards provided, for the first time ever, a vista on the global supply chain – a map of the end-to-end production conveyor belt as products moved between 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  locations. This transformed production processes. For example, invoicing, purchase orders, despatch advice and receipt advice could now be standardised across firms in the new common language. Because the language of individual countries was no longer an obstacle to trade, these standards helped to expand existing, and to create new, global supply links. From the 1980s onwards, supply chains lengthened and strengthened across geographic boundaries. They became genuinely global. Between 1980 and 2005, the total value of world exports quintupled.6 A common language was their glue.