Once you commit to a part numbering scheme, you are married to it for a long time to come, so you need to be 100% sure it is nimble enough to evolve and scale right along with you.

I’ve written some articles recently addressing the pros and cons of intelligent and non-intelligent part numbering, as well as unique challenges that come with an intelligent part numbering system that are useful to read as you decide on a part numbering system. But even within the buckets of intelligent and non-intelligent, part numbering schemes vary. Ultimately, the correct system is one that takes your unique business process into consideration.

So before you commit to any part numbering scheme, ask yourself these three questions:

#1: How do part numbers serve each team within your organization?

In your search for the ideal part numbering scheme, consider how the entire enterprise will be affected.

In general, engineering and design teams tend to prefer intelligent part numbering schemes because the descriptive names can help them identify parts more quickly. On the other hand, your operations department may prefer the efficiency and universality of non-intelligent numbering schemes.

Your engineering team may want some intelligence built into the part numbering system so they can quickly identify components. For example, they may often need to zero in on capacitors or resistors within the BOM, and want a special label to identify those items.

There may also be automated processes connecting business system that rely heavily on the formatting of part numbers—for example the number of characters in the part numbering string. If this is the case, your part numbering format must be perfectly consistent and uniform in order to make sure integrations don’t break down.

#2: Will your part numbering scheme incorporate suppliers, contract manufacturers or different business systems?

Considering the needs of manufacturing partners outside your immediate organization is also a smart idea (although this can be difficult if you are still establishing key partners in your production process.) Your suppliers have a stake in your numbering scheme too, so finding out how they manage part numbers can help you optimize your process from the beginning.

It may also make sense to consider your organization’s position in the manufacturing chain and how many organizations you will be working with up and down the chain. If you are sending data to several organizations on both ends, you may want to choose a system that is as standardized as possible.

#3: What business tools will you use to manage your parts?

Adopting a new part numbering scheme is a major move—you don’t want to complicate matters by choosing a scheme that is too complicated for your existing business tools.

For example, if you manage part numbers in Excel, you may need to include information in the part that helps you run part searches. If you use a PLM system that can generate automated numbers for you, you need to decide how to communicate this information with vendors working outside your PLM system.

Lightweight automated tools to help you number

Many PLM and ERP systems simplify the process of generating and tracking part numbers. But if you’re a small manufacturer who doesn’t have access to one of these tools, or is still stuck in Excel, here are some web services that can help you generate part numbers relatively easily.

- Part-numbering.com: This free service allows you to use generate part numbers in the formats that best fits your needs, whether you want to create multiple intelligent numbering schemes or a single non-intelligent scheme.

- Partnumber.com: This is a free application for assigning intelligent part numbers and creating part descriptions.

Both these services are straightforward and can help you get started with numbering. But as your system becomes more complicated, tools that can help manage a large library of part numbers is recommended.

Putting any kind of new system in place is a challenge. Do you have any war stories you’d like to share?

For more information:

Intelligent vs. non-intelligent part numbering—who’s winning the debate?

A trip down the intelligent part numbering rabbit hole

Part numbering system: How to get started

10 simple steps to free your BOMs from Excel

A good part numbering scheme is nimble. It generates part numbers efficiently and can be maintained without too much brainwork. In other words, it’s the opposite of intelligent part numbering.

Because intelligent schemes are descriptive in nature, it takes more effort to add new parts into the system, and to maintain the system as you grow. To generate a new part number, you’ll need to understand the part, including any specific features or functionalities that go into the name, before determining where it fits into your intelligent scheme. Intelligent part numbering schemes are inherently harder to modify than non-intelligent ones, since all new parts need to be understood and defined within the context of other parts.

What happens if I fall down the intelligent part numbering rabbit hole?

1. You’ll drain resources.

Intelligent part numbers are easily susceptible to descriptive clutter—becoming very confusing, hard to read and impossible to remember. Truncating descriptive terms into abbreviations becomes difficult to keep straight and requires continual employee training and monitoring.

Imagine, for instance, trying to recall whether a part number was intended to specify length then gauge, or the opposite. Does ‘R-12-06’ mean the part is a 12-gauge or that it is half an inch? Small misinterpretations like this one can have unpredictable, and disastrous, consequences.

2. Small design modifications can cause confusion.

When the time comes to modify an intelligently named part—whether it’s adding in a new description to the part number that wasn’t necessary before, or modifying the specs of a part—the change can invalidate or conflict with the part numbers that already exist.

It’s hard to know just how descriptive to get when creating intelligent numbers—and almost no one gets it completely right the first time around. Let’s say you have a 4 gauge, 8 inch green cable. You number the cable ‘G-8-4’ accordingly and use the same scheme for the 200 other cables in your product. Fast forward a few weeks and you discover you can now buy the same cable, but with shielding.

Integrating the new cable into your product will make it better, but will force you to update your cable numbering scheme to indicate ‘shielded’ or ‘unshielded.’ You’re in a lose-lose situation—forced to choose between foregoing a smart part upgrade because you’re locked into your numbering scheme, or wasting time updating old numbers.

Each time you need to add a new parameter to your numbering scheme, you will have to go back and update the numbers for all affiliated parts, dramatically decreasing the sustainability of your system.

3. You’ll be stuck with an outdated system.

Like everything else, manufacturing is going digital—just look at the increased use of QR codes on the factory floor.  This development will soon make descriptive part numbers completely unnecessary.

Now that computers can track part descriptions for us, we do not need part numbers to do the heavy lifting for us.  Computers allow manufacturers to track part numbers with descriptions, so there is no need for the part number to convey intelligent information on its own. Rick Lansky from part-numbering.com sums it up best when he said, “intelligent part numbers are an historical artifact.”

What do you think? Have you found value in intelligent numbering schemes?

For more information:

Intelligent vs. non-intelligent part numbers—who’s winning the debate?

Significant part numbering tips

Part numbering system: How to get started

10 simple steps to free your BOMs from Excel

Your part numbering scheme is ultimately adopted by every team with a stake in product development—from design and engineering to operations and manufacturing—so it’s no surprise that choosing the right scheme is a point of debate for many companies.

Most manufacturing circles today still hold on to the belief that intelligent part numbering schemes are better at managing parts than non-intelligent schemes—but this is starting to change. More manufacturers today are finding the effort to maintain descriptive-dependent part numbers not worth the assumed benefit, and are instead turning to automated tools to generate serial part numbers.

While we offer several helpful resources on our website to explain the differences between intelligent and non-intelligent numbering schemes, this blog series is designed to help you identify the part numbering scheme that is right for your unique business needs.

The pros and cons of intelligent part numbering

Intelligent part numbering schemes, which use descriptive details about the part to communicate part characteristics, are designed to help manufacturers save time and avoid confusion. However, assigning a descriptive meaning to each part number may lock you into a system that can’t scale as your variety and quantity of parts increases.

Considering the needs of your business will help you identify whether a descriptive or serial system is right for you.

The pros and cons of non-intelligent numbering schemes

If you don’t think the pros of intelligent part scheming outweigh the cons, your other option is to adopt a non-intelligent scheme. In a non-intelligent part numbering scheme, numbers are chosen systematically (typically serially) and do not provide any information about the part. These systems can be easy to maintain and are easier in some ways because they require less training to learn. Plus, the responsibilities of managing this kind of system can be more easily shared in the organization.

But non-intelligent schemes are far from error-proof. Mistakes can go unnoticed—especially if data entry is involved, and it can be more difficult to manage similar parts.

Keeping the big picture in mind

If your company has a wide variety of complex parts, multiple product lines or global supply partners, than implementing an intelligent part numbering scheme may be too difficult to maintain. But if assigning descriptive part numbers won’t put a bottleneck in your process and will benefit your teams, than it may be worth the extra effort.

Think about it this way: Can your company afford the time and training necessary to modify an intelligent numbering scheme as you scale? Or is a more appropriate question whether you can afford to have no frame of reference as you look at a list of part numbers?

Considering your unique manufacturing processes, business trajectory and product will help you identify which questions to ask in order to get the answers you need.

To get your gears turning for my next blog post in our series on part numbering, ask yourself—is intelligent part numbering really all that intelligent?

Stay tuned.

For more information:

A trip down the intelligent part numbering rabbit hole

Three considerations when choosing the part numbering scheme that’s right for you

Significant part numbering tips

Part numbering systems: How to get started

10 simple steps to free your BOMs from Excel

Through my exposure to Arena’s customer base, which includes innovative manufacturing companies like GoPro, Square, Beats by Dr. Dre and Sonos, I’ve come across a variety of inspired new products that are not only taking design and engineering to the next level but are also changing the way we live.

Below are a few of the pioneering new products that have caught my eye this year, and just may inspire you to beef up your holiday wish list.

The Fitbit Ultra—a wireless activity and sleep tracker to improve fitness

The Fitbit Ultra tracks your steps taken, stairs climbed and calories burned.

Fitbit, an Arena customer, recently released its Ultra Wireless Tracker that provides even more incentive to take the stairs. The Ultra tracks every step you take using a super sensitive 3-D motion sensor called a MEMS 3-axis accelerometer, similar to the sensor built into a Wii controller, and provides more accuracy than traditional pedometers. The newly built-in altimeter recognizes when you are climbing or descending stairs and counts that in your daily exercise as well.

The Ultra can also calculate calories burned throughout the course of the day, giving you a complete snapshot of your daily fitness. You can even track how long and how well you sleep and automatically sync your data into the cloud to check progress over time.

Withings’s Wi-Fi Body Scale—the first personalized smart scale

Monitor your weight, fat mass and BMI with the Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale

Being a numbers junkie, the wi-fi body scale appeals to my addiction. This beautifully designed scale gives you a complete body analysis, including stats on weight, fat and muscle mass and BMI, and tracks changes over time. The silver wi-fi sensor in the center of the scale automatically sends your health stats to the cloud, where you can access the data online or through a free app on your iPad, iPhone or Android device. The web dashboard clearly displays your health information over a period of time and allows you to view any given date range. And since the data exists in the cloud, it’s easy to share your health progress with others, like your doctor or coach.

The scale is extremely accurate and can automatically recognize and remember multiple users, making it family-friendly.

RunKeeper—designed to track, manage and improve your fitness

Who says running isn’t social? Besides tracking running stats including distance, pace, calories, heart rate and paths traveled, RunKeeper creates a social community around improving your daily exercise.

Track your progress with the RunKeeper mobile app

RunKeeper is a mobile app that uses the GPS already built into most mobile devices to log your fitness runs and patterns and lets you share that information with those in your fitness community. By sharing your workouts with friends and family, you get the social motivation and feedback to push yourself to the next level.

The app is smart enough to identify patterns in your workout to help you improve the performance and quality of your workouts. Just sync up your iPod and off you go.

Strava—helping you log, analyze, compare and compete with your rides

Strava is another social fitness tracking mobile app that gives you a detailed snapshot of your fitness routine and enables easy comparison with friends around the world. You can also choose to maintain your privacy and use it for personal tracking.

Visualize your rides with Strava's training log

Using a dedicated GPS device or one already built into your iPhone or Android, Strava tracks and analyzes your rides or runs and visualizes your fitness history over time. Strava even takes elevation into account, adjusting your “suffer score” based on your increased heart rate during a given sprint.

One of the coolest aspects of Strava is its Leaderboard feature, which let’s you compare your pace on a given route with previous runs or with friends who have run the same ground. You can even filter through Strava users who belong to a similar weight and age class to see how you fare.

Which innovative new gadgets have grabbed your attention this holiday season? Share your find in the comments section below.

For more information:

Lytro makes headlines with its light field photography camera

The Victor Bike: the bicycle goes even greener

Does open-design hardware have a place in manufacturing?

We’re excited to announce that Arena PartSaver now supports the Jameco Electronics website, making it easier than ever to collect electronic components for your BOMs like semiconductors, passives, interconnects, electromechanical equipment and power supplies.

To learn more about how the partnership between Jameco and Arena can help engineers shopping for components, I talked with Arena product manager Kathy Davies. With a background in engineering, Kathy understands the hassles of organizing part data, and developed Arena PartSaver to make part gathering easy.

Alyssa: What is Arena PartSaver?

Kathy: Arena PartSaver is a free bookmarklet that helps you build a parts list quickly by capturing part data—including information on the manufacturer, manufacturing part number, cost, quantity and data sheet URLs—from distributor websites and saving it to a Google doc.

Arena PartSaver eliminates the need for copy and paste, helps you avoid typos that can really throw off your comparison-shopping and makes it easier to edit, revise and share your parts list whenever you want.

Alyssa: Why are you so excited to have Arena PartSaver on the Jameco website?

Kathy: Jameco and Arena are a great fit because we both provide services to businesses of varying sizes—from individual inventors to small and mid-size manufacturing companies. Jameco has over 50,000 components available online, so chances are good that our users can find the part they need—quickly and easily.

Alyssa: Does Arena PartSaver support other electrical part distributors in addition to Jameco?

Kathy: Yes. You can currently use Arena PartSaver to gather product data on 13 different distributor websites. The number of distributors who support the application is continuing to grow, but for now supported sites include:

Alyssa: What’s next for Arena PartSaver?

Kathy: We will continue to improve Arena PartSaver and will add new functionality based on customer feedback, and how people are using the application.

If you’d like to help us improve our applications, or have any questions about Arena PartSaver, send us some feedback. We’d love to hear from you.

Alyssa: Stay informed about future PartSaver updates

Kathy: It’s easy to stay in the loop and help steer the future developments of Arena PartSaver—just visit the PartSaver website to sign up.  You can also visit Jameco to start using Arena PartSaver to shop for parts.

Engineers are told to design something, manufacturers are told to make something.

Engineering opens the design funnel, manufacturing closes it.

Engineers wrestle multiple theoretical possibilities into a realistic design, manufacturers make that design a physical reality.

When you really think about it, manufacturing and engineering are asked to work in parallel while being completely at odds philosophically. Their differing educations, day-to-day tasks and departmental goals ultimately cause them to form very different beliefs about how things should get done. So is it any surprise that there are often disconnects between engineering and production—particularly when it comes to managing the bill of materials (BOM)?

During the design phase, the cost of change is low

When engineers begin to design a BOM in their CAD tool, the possibilities can seem endless. As they move through iterations to find the perfect solution, dealing with a restrictive change process can be extremely frustrating.

During this part of the design process the cost of change is very low, and so for engineers, the ability to iterate quickly and keep the creativity flowing is key. Changes to the design—however major—have nowhere near the impact they will have several hops later in the process when the entire supply chain is involved and real products are being molded and extruded.

For manufacturers, software changes have real consequences

On the other hand, once a BOM crosses over to the manufacturing side, actions taken in the software program actually map to actions in the physical world. When you change order quantities, or mess around with the components in the BOM, this can potentially cost your organization large sums of money. A plan to build 100k of Product A using xyz materials actually translates into those materials becoming a product—with connected inventory usage and labor costs. This focus on the present and the tangible is really what drives manufacturers to care so much about keeping things on track, and making sure changes are managed methodically and thoroughly.

Walking the line between engineering and manufacturing

With the differences in philosophy between engineering and manufacturing, there is a natural tension between these two groups—from the way each group manages product data, to the way each group prefers to handoff the BOM. But is this tension irreconcilable? While engineers often are frustrated by document control, manufacturers can be frustrated with an engineer’s desire to work and rework a product, pushing up dangerously close to production timelines.

Given  our application’s position in the engineering and manufacturing process, we see both sides of the story in every single customer who joins the Arena community. Because of our connection to both production and design, I am interested in hearing how each group has managed the engineering/manufacturing relationship.

I’d like to know—how have you come to consensus on how change revisions and the BOM itself should be managed?

If you have a particularly interesting story, send me an email—I would love to interview you for future articles.

For more information

Excel BOM Template—for organizations just getting started with BOM and change management

Engineering BOM—the ins and outs

Share clean snapshots of your BOM with PDXViewer

Turning great designs into great products: the changing world of mechanical design

A flat BOM conveys simplified product data.

Once you’ve created a deeply nested BOM within your CAD program, sharing the information with other departments as a multi-level BOM from your PLM system is an intuitive next step. But within an organization, there are many departments that rely on BOMs to complete purchasing tasks, manage inventory and even sell the product to customers. Is a multi-level BOM really the most helpful way for these employees to access product data?

Who prefers flat BOMs in an organization?

There are times when it makes sense to provide internal customers with a fully indented BOM, but for some departments this information is excessive.

Consider employees working in finance and procurement who utilize the BOM to determine order quantities and total cost. Individuals in this position prefer to work off a flat BOM because it gives them the product quantity data they need without unnecessary assembly and sub-assembly instructions. Because flat BOMs enable quicker quantity calculations and simplify cost analysis, they are an ideal view for your finance department.  In fact, providing finance with too much detail into assembly numbers and construction may cause confusion and lead to purchasing errors.

Sales is another department that can benefit from a flattened version of the BOM, as they are mostly looking for relevant warranty and spares data and don’t need assembly details. The organization of a multi-level BOM makes finding this information difficult, so it can actually slow sales down.

Even within the manufacturing department there are players who would be better off with a flat BOM. For example, some entry-level production workers use a BOM as an inventory checklist—for these employees, product information is best presented in a simple, single-level format.

When it comes to BOM organization, be consistent!

Even if you provide the correct employees with a flattened BOM, the information can still be confusing if you don’t organize the information with a consistent methodology. For example, an employee who believes the product data is organized by assembly order will interpret the flattened BOM differently than an employee who believes it is structured by cross-section. Maintaining consistency of presentation is critical to ensuring every player within an organization is on the same page.

Additionally, there may be times when team members move up in an organization and require retraining to read BOM structures with a higher level of complexity. For example, someone who begins in a company receiving inventory may suddenly need to read and understand nested BOMs if they move into assembly. Making retraining a priority will help you avoid miscommunication down the road.

At the end of the day, the BOM is the seed of your product. Ensuring that it is accessible and helpful to your team members will open lines of communication and yield greater success throughout the product lifecycle.

For more information

A recent article, Managing Multi-Level BOMs, provides an in-depth run-down of the factors to consider when determining how to best structure your product BOM. The article provides examples of multi-level BOMs, considers the challenges of managing multi-level BOMs and discusses how PLM solutions like Arena help mitigate these obstacles. For manufacturers interested in learning more about BOM structures, or for those ready to build a master parts list and share it with suppliers, the article provides a technical breakdown of need-to-know information.

Additional Resources

Managing multi-level BOMs

Share BOMs more effectively with the PDX file standard

Ten tips on how to get by when you’re relying on Excel

BOM management strategies: Four recommendations for better Excel BOMs

Become a BOM Master

A three-step approach to managing your product data

How do interactions between engineers and manufacturing contribute to your manufacturing change process?

To that end, we continue to evolve our offerings and online resources so that makers and innovators can get high-quality products to market faster and with ease. We are always looking for ways to support those involved in the product development process—people like engineers and even suppliers, who work alongside operations and manufacturing to create and build products.

In addition to creating our own tools, like Arena PDX Viewer, we like to spread the word about valuable web services and time-savers for manufacturers and engineers whenever we find out about them. Our VP of Product Design, Marc Escobosa, recently directed me to four sites that he thought were particularly useful to engineers. I’d like to share them with you now, plus debut a free new Arena tool for electrical engineers—Arena PartSaver.

Let me know if you find these resources helpful—and if you have other time-savers you’d like to share, please add them in the comments below.

Arena PartSaver

Arena PartSaver is a free application designed to make finding and capturing part information easier. Arena PartSaver allows you to capture and save part information from Digi-Key, Mouser, Arrow and a growing number of other distributor sites with the click of a button.

To use Arena PartSaver, visit the Arena PartSaver homepage and drag the Arena PartSaver browser button to your toolbar. Once the browser button is displayed in your toolbar, simply look for parts on Digi-Key  or another supported site. When you find a part you like, click the browser button to instantly capture the part information. From there, you can save the part details to a Google Docs spreadsheet.

Arena PartSaver was designed to make capturing and saving detailed part information a no-brainer. We hope you find it useful (and would love to hear any ideas for other features you’d like to see).

Analog Circuit Simulator

The Analog Circuit Simulator is an applet that simulates the activity of electronic circuits, and is a useful tool for electrical engineers during the design process. The simulator shows an animated schematic of a simple LRC circuit, with different colors showing positive voltage, ground, negative voltage and current.

There is a lot of functionality available on this tiny applet. You can move your mouse over any component of the circuit to see a short description of that component and its current state, and can easily modify components as well. You can also access a “Circuits” menu, with sample circuits for you to try digitally before considering them for a project.

CalculatorEdge

CalculatorEdge is a website with hundreds of free online engineering calculators and formulas that can help you solve complex equations in the fields of electrical, mechanical, civil and chemical engineering, electronics, metallurgy, physics, math and more.

The site is extremely dense, and once you click into a particular subject area there are many specific calculations the site can help you with. For example, a quick glance at the Electronics Engineering section reveals calculators that assist with Ohm’s Law, voltage drop, air core inductor inductance, heat sink temperature, battery life and more.

EE HomePage

EE HomePage offers tools, educational materials and advice for electrical engineering professionals, educators and students. This site also has tips for managing and promoting an engineering career.

There are many varied resources on this site, and there is a dedicated “tools” section that gives quick and easy access to things like a browser-based RPN calculator, filter design software, reusable robotic software and more.

The Engineering ToolBox

As the name implies, The Engineering ToolBox is a resource guide for everything related to design, engineering and various technical applications.

There are a lot of times in the design process this site could be useful. Say you need to know more about a material you’re working with. Just click on the Material Properties link. You can quickly find anything from Prandtl’s number for air temperatures to the chemical resistance of CPVC pipes. You can also access 2D and 3D drawing tools, instrumentation and process control system information and much more.

The other helpful thing about The Engineering ToolBox is that it is customizable—you can save relevant links to a Short List, so it’s literally your own personal toolbox. Depending on your current needs, you can switch up the links and make your own reference guide.

If you are an engineer who hates documentation, read on—here are some reasons why you should document your part information during the design phase of production, and a few tips about what you should document.

Why you need to document part data during the design phase

Simply put, designs don’t live in a spreadsheet forever—and when your product goes into mass production other people will need to be able to recreate what you did. For example, when a product goes from prototype to production it becomes the purchasing team’s job to buy parts in bulk so the product can be built in volume—if purchasing doesn’t take the wheel, a contract manufacturer (CM) will. If your purchasing team or your CM want to optimize for cost, lead time and part needs across projects, having detailed part information will make sure that the engineering requirements for your product are met.

Rigorous and consistent part documentation policies can prevent late-breaking component challenges, and make sure your designs get manufactured quickly and affordably. If your organization is fairly new to document control, here are some tips for finding and documenting components during the design and production phases.

What part information you should be documenting

As you are looking for parts, you should document part specifications and key part data along the way. If you belong to a small company, this information may be recorded on paper or in an Excel doc. If your product is highly complex, or if there are multiple people who will need to work with the part data, it is helpful to use an electronic data management tool. No matter how you choose to document your part information, you should at least be capturing:

• The manufacturer’s part number
• The vendor name and contact info
• The engineering requirements

As you document the specifications of components that are critical to your product’s design, you may also want to take future needs into consideration. For example, where is the part in its lifecycle—is it still evolving? Is it mature? Is it being discontinued? Will demand for this component skyrocket, making it even more difficult to source, or do you expect it to flood the market and drop in price?

These additional factors are not necessary items for documentation, but they may help your operations team keep production running smoothly later on down the road.

Special considerations for hard-to-find parts and single source components

If you are using hard-to-find parts or single source components, you should take a few extra precautions when documenting your parts. Since hard-to-find parts may be rendered obsolete by the manufacturer or removed from a vendor’s inventory without notice, you may want to find and document alternative sources.  If you are working with single source parts, you may want to form and document a backup plan to handle worst case scenarios—like what should be done if your vendor has limited quantities or goes out of business.

Do you have the proper tools for success?

Properly documenting part information—capturing the manufacturer’s part number, obtaining part spec sheets, recording vendor information—will enable your internal purchasing team or your contract manufacturer to get the best possible price for parts and can even become a competitive advantage for your organization.

There are some tools that can help you properly document part and design information, like PLM or BOM management software. You may also want to consider storing part information in a component library like an EDA (electronic design automation) tool. A stable and well defined component library makes it easier to use easily accessible parts in your designs, or locate alternative choices for parts if the one you want is unavailable.

You don’t want to wait until a product reaches the manufacturing line to realize that it contains parts with procurement challenges or functional limitations, so document early on in the process. It takes much more time and effort to go back and fix documentation, or to deal with the consequences of poor documentation than it does to document product parts properly the first time.

For more information on documenting part data

• Three Steps to Cost Control: Addressing the Root Cause of Unexpected Product Costs
• Part Numbering Schemes—Intelligent vs. Non-Intelligent
• Finding and Documenting Electronic Parts

This Valentine’s Day we are giving part numbering schemes a big juicy KISS.

Parts are the heart of your product. You have to manage (um, treat) them just right, otherwise you could have product heartache on your hands.

Assigning a part number is a way for a manufacturer to reference a part. Some may employ a significant (aka intelligent) part numbering scheme, where numbers provide important details about each part. Others use insignificant (aka non-intelligent) part numbering, where part numbers are assigned in a purely sequential way and a number provides no information about a part.

We won’t discuss the pros and cons of each approach in this post (but you can find some of them in this article on our website). Instead we have a short list of guidelines to follow when creating a significant part numbering scheme.

In the spirit of the mantra “Keep It Simple S#@!%,” we’ve put together a set of tips for how to design a part numbering scheme that is both significant and simple.

4 tips for a simple, significant part numbering scheme

K – Key attributes.

Think about your parts and how you could group them. Do you have substantial sets and subsets? If so, consider using that information to help construct your number format.

I – Intelligent, but not too intelligent.

Defining each and every attribute of a part will create a complex scheme. And that’s not the goal, remember. Create a scheme that provides just enough detail but won’t be burdensome to maintain over time.

S – Simple, straightforward format!

A significant part number has meaning. Help your organization understand that meaning by using a clear-cut format that makes sense to everyone. Make your part numbers easy to read by including delimiters, like dashes, in your scheme.

S – Seven is the magic number.

When devising an intelligent part numbering sequence, think seven characters. Anything longer and the probability of data entry errors will go up. A longer part number also becomes more difficult to recall by memory.

With these tips, you can create a significant part numbering scheme you’ll cherish. Do you have other tips for creating intelligent part numbering schemes? We’d love to hear them.

Additional resources

Part Numbering Schemes—Intelligent vs. Non-Intelligent