First a few general questions:

Do you build significance into your item numbers?
How many digits are your item numbers?
Are they numeric or alpha numeric?

Does your company follow the ASME Y14.100-2000 standards?
How are engineering drawings numbered & what's the process for revision control for parts similar in form, fit, or function based of sizes, color, etc.?

Currently our item numbers are 6 characters in length, all numeric, and no significance built into them - just the next free number in each number series based on types of items (raw materials, subassemblies, FG, etc.) This makes it very easy for data entry. Our Engineers would like to add dash numbers to the end of new item numbers for parts similar in form, fit, or function based of sizes, color, etc. because this will reduce the number of drawings they will have to do. Operations is against this change.

I'm wondering if other companies faced similar situations & how it was handled. Pros & cons?

Thanks,
Shirley :confused:

Dear Shirley,

There are some valid arguments on either methods of this part numbering system:
For non-meaningful part number: users don't remember part numbers, they search by search keys and description
For meaningful part number:
By carefully designing the part number, the first few digits of the part number can be used very well in narrowing choices when selecting parts anyway. This also helps employees to identify what kind of parts it is when looking at documents/correspondence that mention the part numbers
Carefully designed part numbers helps in preventing same code for different items or different codes for same item
Systematic part number will be easy to identify on documents full of codes. In other words, you can easily pick up which codes are SO numbers, which are employee codes, and which are part numbers, for example in a packing slip full of codes
In the similar way with the point before, systematic part number will be easy to identify on labels full of bar codes

Rgds,
Paul

Shirley,

Of course it would be more efficient to use item numbers who speak a little bit more. You could work with groups and subgroups in the item number to identifie it better.

But there is a solution to help your engineers and that is by using the EDM module.

I faced the same problems some years ago and we used the EDM module to solve the needs of the engineers.

You can define drawing numbers in the EDM module and then link this drawing number to different item numbers. So you can continue in having different item number but they all have the same drawing number.
On top of that we used the search key II to put in the drawing number so the engineers could search on drawing number if they wanted

Have a closer look at the EDM module.

Hope this can help you a bit
Peter B

Intelligent part numbers sound very attractive, but be very careful if you're going to implement them. No matter how carefully you plan, you will eventually have problems. There's just no way to accurately account for every possibility in the future. You either run out of numbers with a category, or you encounter items that don't fit into the categories defined.

We use eight-digit part numbers, of which the first three digits are an alpha commodity code. It is definitely helpful in identifying parts, but there are those new items that couldn't be foreseen when the system was created. Sometimes I can create a new commodity that fits in seamlessly withthe existing codes, somtimes I can't. A good number of items end up in the "other" sub-categories. So go ahead and build intelligent numbers, but think it through very carefully and go into it knowing that there will be holes in the system down the road.

I'm starting to look at the possibility of using the dash numbers for new versions of existing items. The field has a hard time when we change a number completely. Much easier for parts manuals, etc if the base number stays the same. We haven't thought this all the way through yet to see if it make sense for us, though.

Peter - good thoughts on using EDM. We use it already, but we let Search Key II default to the part number itself. I've known that you can build relationships from one E-Item to multiple Items, but have never seen a good use for it. This is worth considering as we re-think our numbering systems.

Jim

Hi Jim,

Just a small remark. We used this methode with EDM for a machine building company (typical enviroment with engineers). The reason why we used search key II was because there was not a possibility to look for an item by drawing number.

Regards,
Peter