One of our clients wanted an advise on how to codify items. It was for a precision turned component manufacturing company. The material included customer drawing no based finished goods, various grades and shapes of steel bars as raw material, cutting tools, consumables, jigs & fixtures and such tooling, gauges and instruments.

Generally companies have evolve their own nomenclature. Some by experience and some by advise. And there are still some who are still discovering!

Earlier computer systems were not used by the SME sector. This was the period when Item Code mattered a lot. There used to be some logic built into the code. For example 40-114 denoted 40 series which was supposed to be say steel bars and 114 just denoted the serial no of register in which parts were registered.

Some evolved code in such a way that it was possible to almost identify the item from code. For example  RMEN8D20 represented Raw Material of EN8D grade and diameter 20mm.

Some companies have a big alpha-numeric code like 000234111T. Usually such codes are of equal digits. This helps in sorting the list of items. Zeroes are attached usually in the suffix to make up for the decided length if required.

What we recommend is a easy to understand code which follows the following rules:1. The Codes are of equal digits. 2. Short forms and Abbreviations must be defined and hence used with consistency.3. The logic of code should always go from broader to narrower.4. Do not use any space or underscore within the code. Use "-" instead.5. Do not make it too complex.

As such all good software have excellent search facilities. Even with a few key strokes one can reach the desired item. Items can be searched even by keying in a small part of description. And then there are alternate media like bar codes and RFID tags where even keying in is eliminated. Hence we feel the significance of Item Code is decreasing day by day. Let us not think too much about it.